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THE ACQUISITION OF SEFI AND ESTAH BY SPANISH-
SPEAKING CHILDREN

presented by

Carolina Holtheuer

has been accepted towards fulfillment
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MA. degree in Linguistics

 

 

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Major Professor’s Signature

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6/01 c-JCIRC/DaIeDuepss-p. t 5

 

THE ACQUISITION OF SEE AND EST/1R BY SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN
By

Carolina Holtheuer

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages

2003

ABSTRACT
THE ACQUISITION OF SER AND ESTAR BY SPANISH-SPEAKING CHILDREN
By

Carolina Holtheuer

In this thesis I investigate the knowledge of 361' and estar in Spanish-speaking chil-
dren. The main goal is to determine if children know the differences in meaning between
the two copulas. I also investigate whether one copula is acquired before the other,
whether Spanish-speaking children use syntactic, semantic or pragmatic information in
order to use the copulas correctly; and whether age is a predictor for correct copula use.
From Sera [1992] we know that although Spanish-speaking children have some knowl-
edge about copular use, they still have problems distinguishing between the two copulas
based on semantic properties. Two experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 used a
Picture Selection Task and tested comprehension of copula estar. Experiment 2 used an
Acceptability Task and tested syntactic, lexical/semantic and pragmatic knowledge of
361' and estar. The results suggest that Spanish-speaking children do have some semantic
knowledge of 361‘ and estar. The fact that they select the marked non-canonical picture
for sentences with estar in the Picture Selection Task suggests that children know that
estar is the temporally marked copula and therefore that it is the appropriate copula
for transitory properties. However, they do not perform adult-like in the Accepatbility
Task. The findings confirm Sera’s hypothesis that Spanish-speaking children seem to
use syntactic cues in order to discriminate between the copulas. They seem to rely on
syntactic information more than on semantic information. Also, Children have more
problems when the copula choice depends on discourse factors alone. This is consistent
with Avrutin and Wexler [1999] finding that children make significantly more errors
when the correct interpretation of pronouns requires knowledge of the interaction of

syntactic and discourse-related constraints.

To my mother Diana.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all I would like to thank my committee members, Alan Beretta, Alan Munn
and Cristina Schmitt for their guidance and support. I owe them my interest in Lin-
guistics since they are not only exceptional scholars but also admirable human beings.

I am particularly indebted to my advisor Cristina Schmitt. She introduced me into
the fascinating field of child language acquisition with great enthusiasm and taught me
almost all I know about it. Because of the considerable amount of time and dedication
she put into this thesis, I see it as the product of joint efforts rather than my individual
work. I thank her for generously sharing her knowledge with me and for being an
inspiration in difficult moments.

A very special “thank you” goes to Karen Miller for running the Chilean version of the
Picture Selection Task in the city of Punta Arenas. She helped with great professionalism
and care.

I am very grateful to Linda Bailey for printing the final version of this thesis. She
was also kind enough to help with other documentation. Thank you Linda!

I want to express my gratitude to all the people who participated in this project as
subjects. I thank my Chilean fellows at MSU for participating in the Picture Selection
Task. The Cuban parents and children, with their natural sympathy and generosity
made the data collection a very enjoyable experience. This research could not have
been carried out without the enthusiastic and perseverant collaboration of my dear
friend Ramona who recruited the Cuban subjects.

I gratefully acknowledge that this work was partially supported by a Research En-
hancement Award from the Graduate School and a Tinker Field Grant.

Also, I am in debt with the people of The Center for Language Education And
Research (CLEAR) at MSU for giving me the opportunity to learn and work with
them: Maria José Alvarez, Vineet Bansal, Anna Davis, Marisol Fernandez, Susan Gass,

Denni Hoopingarner, Jane Ozanich, Ok-Sook Park, and Carol Wilson. I gained valuable

iv

professional and personal experiences for having worked with them.

Many people are responsible for making my life in East Lansing a wonderful experi-
ence: Malta and Rodrigo, Silvia, Luz Maria, Rubén, Maria Fernanda, Sarah, Jenny and
Noel, Lucia, Noemi, Onur, Francisco, Gastén, F‘i‘ancisco, Sonia, Stacey, Teresa, Victor
and many others. I formally apologize to all my Spanish-speaking friends for my tireless
and boring inquisition about their native language intuitions. I also want to thank the
linguistic crowd at MSU for sharing with me their intellectual enthusiasm and having a
nice time together: Karen, Ming, Becky, Thor, Peter and Il-Jae.

Finally, I wish to thank my family, my mother Diana, my sister and brother, Diana
and German, and my aunts Petit and Canca. I especially thank Facundo for his love
and patience and for his help with the statistics and the painful formatting of this
thesis. They, with their unconditional love and support are the main reason why I have

completed this work.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2

1.1

The relevance of the copula to language acquisition studies ........ 3

1.1.1 The relevance of the copula to language acquisition and linguistic

theory ................................. 4

1.2 First language acquisition studies ...................... 8
1.2.1 Production, comprehension and judgment studies ......... 8

1.2.2 The need for testing comprehension ................. 10

1.3 Previous studies ................................ 12
Theoretical and acquisition aspects of ser and estar 15
2.1 Descriptive accounts of 361‘ and estar .................... 15
2.1.1 Distribution .............................. 15
2.1.2 Interpretation ............................. 17

2.2 Theoretical accounts of 361‘ and estar in adjective constructions ..... 19
2.2.1 Semantic accounts .......................... 19
2.2.2 Syntactic-semantic accounts ..................... 23
2.2.3 Pragmatic accounts .......................... 29
2.2.4 Basic properties of ser and estar .................. 32

2.3 Relevant Acquisition Questions ....................... 40
2.3.1 English ................................. 40
2.3.2 Spanish ................................ 45

vi

2.3.3 Remaining acquisition questions about ser and estar ....... 49

2.3.4 Conclusions of Chapter 2 ....................... 51

3 Experiments in the acquisition of the Spanish c0pula in adjectival pred-

icates 53
3.1 Introduction .................................. 53
3.2 The Picture Selection Task: comprehension of estar ............ 54
3.2.1 Goal of the experiment and predictions ............... 54

3.2.2 Subjects ................................ 57

3.2.3 Experimental Methodology ...................... 58

3.2.4 Results ................................. 61

3.2.5 Discussion ............................... 62

3.3 The Acceptability Task ............................ 65
3.3.1 Goal of the experiment ........................ 65

3.3.2 Subjects ................................ 70

3.3.3 Experimental Methodology ...................... 71

3.3.4 Results ................................. 79

3.3.5 Discussion ............................... 89

3.4 Summary of chapter 3 ............................ 91

4 Conclusions 93
4.1 Suggestions for further research ....................... 95

A Norming Study 98
B Picture Selection Task 100
8.1 Items for the PST ............................... 100
B2 Scores per child for PST ........................... 102
83 Pictures for PST ............................... 105

vii

C Acceptability Task 109

C.1

C2
C3
C4
C5
C6

Stories and items for the Acceptability Task ................ 109
C.1.1 Condition 1. Polysemic “Free” .................... 109
C.1.2 Condition 2. Polysemic “de” complement .............. 111
C13 Condition 3 Context biased ..................... 112
01.4 Condition 4. Absolute clauses .................... 114
C.1.5 Condition 5. Conjunction ...................... 115
C.1.6 Fillers used in the Acceptability Task ................ 116
Distribution of Items of the Acceptability Task ............... 117
Scores and Means per condition, per three age groups ........... 122
Means per Age, per Group and Comparison of Means ........... 133
Scores and Means per Condition for Adults and Children ......... 138
Comparisons of Means using Chi-square .................. 151

viii

List of Tables

2.1 Percentage of Overt Be with SL/ IL adjectives ............... 43
2.2 Adjectives that elicited 361‘ and estar by 3 to 4 year-olds in Sera’s study

number 4 and Percentage correct ...................... 47

3.1 Percentages of ser use per adjective in the Norming study ........ 55
3.2 Percentages per adjective in the Cuban group (and p-values for compar-
ison to see if they were above chance) ................... 61

3.3 Percentages per adjective in the Chilean group (and p-values for compar-

ison to see if they were above chance) ................... 61
3.4 Percentage correct of Cuban children per age group ............ 62
3.5 Percentage correct of Chilean children per age group ........... 62

3.6 Percentages correct in three age groups for Cuban subjects in the PST . 64
3.7 Percentages correct in three age groups for Chilean subjects in the PST . 64

3.8 Examples of Distribution of Items for two children in the AT (SLzStage

Level; ILz-Individual Level. A: acceptable; Ntnot acceptable) ..... 78
3.9 Means per condition per three age groups ................. 79
3.10 Means per condition in adults and children ................ 80
3.11 Variable description ............................. 81
3.12 Descriptive Statistics ............................. 81
3.13 Coefficients per condition for children and adults ............. 86
3.14 Coefficient b1 ................................. 87
3.15 Coefficient b1 in conditions 4 and 5 ..................... 87

ix

A.1 Scores and percentages with 367' for each adjective (serrl, esta'rr-O) . . 99

B.1 Scores per adjective per child for the PST (1:correct, 0—incorrect) Cuban
Group ..................................... 103

B2 Scores per adjective per child for the PST (lrcorrect, 01incorrect) Chilean

Group ..................................... 104
C.1 Means per three age groups. Cond. 1 Group A .............. 123
C2 Means per three age groups. Cond 1 Group B ............... 124
C3 Means per three age groups. Cond 2 Group A ............... 125
C4 Means per three age groups. Cond 2 Group B ............... 126
C5 Means per three age groups. Cond 3 Group A ............... 127
C6 Means per three age groups. Cond 3 Group B ............... 128
C7 Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 4 Adults ................. 129
C8 Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 4 Children ................ 130
C9 Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 5 Group A ............... 131
C.10 Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 5 Group B ............... 132

CH Means in three Age Groups (the number of subjects is in parentheses) . 133

C.12 Comparison Adults and Young children ................... 134
C.13 Comparison Adults and Old children .................... 135
CM Comparison Young and Old children .................... 136
C.15 Comparison between versions A and B per age group per condition . . . 137
C.16 Scores and Means. Cond. 1 Adults ..................... 139
C.17 Scores and Means. Cond. 1 Children .................... 140
C.18 Scores and Means per three age groups. Cond. 2 Adults ......... 141
C.19 Scores and Means. Cond. 2 Children .................... 142
C20 Scores and Means. Cond. 3 Adults ..................... 143
C21 Scores and Means. Cond. 3 Adults (cont) ................. 144

C.22 Scores and Means. Cond. 3 Children .................... 145

C23 Scores and Means. Cond. 3 Children (cont.) ................ 146
C24 Scores and Means. Cond. 4 Adults ..................... 147
C25 Scores and Means. Cond. 4 Children .................... 148
C26 Scores and Means per three age groups. Cond. 5 Adults ......... 149
C27 Scores and Means per three age groups. Cond. 5 Children ........ 150
C28 Comparison of means adults and children using Chi-square ....... 152
C29 Comparison of Condition Means children ................. 153

xi

List of Figures

8.1
B2
8.3
BA
8.5
B6

Picture for Adj.
Picture for Adj.
Picture for Adj.
Picture for Adj.
Picture for Adj.
Picture for Adj.

‘Tall-ser’ .......................... 106
‘Tall-estar’ ......................... 106
‘Pretty-ser’ ......................... 107
‘Pretty-estar’ ........................ 107
‘Short-ser’ ......................... 108
‘Short-estar’ ........................ 108

xii

Chapter 1

Introduction

In this thesis I investigate the knowledge of the copula verbs ser and estar in Spanish-
speaking children. As the Spanish copulas have very specific uses and are not inter-
changeable, they pose an interesting learnability problem for children. The main goal of
this study is to determine if children know the differences in meaning between the two
copulas. In doing so I also investigate (1) whether Spanish-speaking children acquire one
copula before the other, (2) what kind of knowledge (syntactic, semantic or pragmatic)
children exploit in order to use the copulas correctly; and (3) whether age is a predictor
for correct copula use.

From Sera [1992] we know that Spanish-speaking children have a good deal of
knowledge about copular use. For example, Sera reports that children know that estar
appears with locative predicates and ser with nominal predicates. However, Sera reports
that the children did not distinguish between the two copulas based on the semantic
properties of the subject. In Spanish, the location of objects requires the presence of
copula ester while the location of events requires the copula ser. According to Sera, until
the age of 11, Spanish—speaking children use estar‘ to locate both objects and events.

Since Sera points out that children might draw a distinction between copulas based
on types of predicates (since locatives but not nominals have a preposition), we cannot
safely conclude that children know that ser and ester have different semantic-aspectual

properties. In order to find out what children know about copular differences we need to

test comprehension of the copulas in environments in which the choice of either ser and
ester depends separately on lexical, semantic, pragmatic and syntactic factors. This is
possible in adjetival predicates.

I hypothesize that children may acquire ester before ser. This is consistent with the
Semantic Subset Principle (Grain and Thornton [1998], Crain [1992], Crain et el [1994],
Grain and Philip [1993]). This principle is argued to lead children acquiring language
to first choose the representation that is true in the smallest set of circumstances. Since
ester can be a subset of ser, it is reasonable to expect that if children are indeed following
the Semantic Subset Principle, they should acquire ester before ser. I also predict that
children will have more problems when the copula choice depends on discourse factors
alone. This is consistent with Avrutin and Wexler’s finding (Avrutin and Wexler [1999])
that children make significantly more errors when the correct interpretation of pronouns
requires knowledge of the interaction of syntactic and discourse-related constraints.

I conduct two experiments. The first experiment tests comprehension of ester and
used a Picture Selection Task (henceforth PST) design and the second experiment tests
the use of both ser and ester in specific contexts by using a version of Me Daniel and
Cairns’ (Mc Daniel and Cairns [1996]) Grammaticality Judgement Task, an Accept-
ability Judgement task (AT).

This thesis is organized as follows: In the remainder of this chapter, I briefly deal
with the relevance of the copula within child language acquisition and the issue of the
meaning of the copula in linguistic theory. Then I review some acquisition studies
and motivate the need for doing comprehension studies. I conclude with a very brief
summary of two studies about copula acquisition in English and Spanish. In chapter 2,
I focus on the theoretical analyzes that have accounted for ser and ester. I begin by
describing the basic distributive and interpretative facts of ser and ester. After reviewing
the inadequacies of previous accounts of the Spanish copulas, I show that an adequate

description and explanation of ser and ester must take into account the aspeetual and

discourse properties of the copula. Chapter 3 reports on two experiments that tested
Spanish-speaking children’s comprehension of basic properties that differentiate ser and
ester in adjectival predicates. I show that children seem to know that ser and ester
have different meanings. In Chapter 4 I summarize the main findings of this thesis and

I refer to their implications.

1.1 The relevance of the cepula to language acqui-
sition studies

Linguistic theory attempts to describe and explain facts about human language. As
Chomsky [1995] puts it, generative grammar needs “to find a way to account for the
phenomena of particular languages (descriptive adequacy), and to explain how knowl—
edge of these facts arises in the mind of the speaker-bearer (explanatory adequacy)” In
order to explain how language is used and understood linguists need to (i) characterize
the stable state attained by the language faculty (adult grammar) and (ii) characterize
the initial state in order to see how experience is involved in the process of language
acquisition (early child grammar). The issue regarding how much experience is needed
so that the child acquires language is very much in debate. Very generally, Universal
Grammar advocates claim that our linguistic knowledge is innately specified as part of
our biological endowment and that as so, experience could not play alone a determinant
role in the acquisition of a stable state of linguistic competence. Those opposed to this
view, claim that experience is decisive since children learn from the input all they need
to know in order to achieve the stable state. Although I am sympathetic to the nativist
view of language acquisition I will not disregard the notion that the input could play
a significant role. This thesis intends to investigate what type of knowledge Spanish
speaking children use while hypothesizing about differences between the two Spanish
copulas ser and ester. I believe that in order to give a fair account of the Spanish

copula acquisition, we need to consider a broad picture of language acquisition.

1.1.1 The relevance of the cepula to language acquisition and
linguistic theory
The study of copula acquisition is relevant in a number of respects: i) it is a frequent
item in early child language in spite of the common assumption that functional items
arise late in child language development; ii) the types of copulas vary crosslinguistically
imposing interesting learnability problems, and iii) there is no consensus in the literature
regarding the exact syntactic and semantic status of the copula in different languages.
Given that, perhaps the acquisition data may provide us with some insights on their

properties, let us consider these points in more detail:
Frequency of the c0pula in the input and early production

In terms of frequency, the study of copula acquisition is interesting in two ways. First,
the copula appears frequently in the input providing children with many opportunities
of exposure to positive evidence and second, children produce the copula in very early
stages of language acquisition. Let us consider the evidence from three languages: Becker
[2001] reports that inflected be is the most common verbal-inflection item in English
child language and Francis and Kucera [1982] consider be as one of the most common
words in spoken adult English. In Spanish, Sera [1992] reports that a CHILDES sample
contained 497 copula occurrences (426 occurrences came from adults and 71 came from
the children’s utterances). In Dutch, Van Kampen [2001] analyzes the files of Sarah
(week 86-150) (van Kampen corpus, CHILDES) and reports that closed class elements
(illocution operators as she defines them) like D (dit/dat ‘this/that’) and I elements
(is/kan ‘is/can’) are more frequent than content elements. While illocution operators
occurred between 50 and 300 times (for single items), content elements occurred only
between 1 and 30 times. Therefore, we can raise two issues in relation to the copula:
First, what is the status of the copula in child language, is it just a carrier of inflectional
features or is it a verb? Does it have meaning or not? Second, is the production and

comprehension of the copula more or less at the same pace?

4

Crosslinguistic differences of the capula

Stassen [1997], in a broad typological study, analyzes cases of intransitive predication
in more than 400 languages. Regarding the copula, he argues that languages can be
distinguished based on whether they use a full (overt lexical item) or a zero (by jux-
taposition) copula. Languages that use a zero copula include Papuan, Australian, and
Eastern Austronesian, Central America and Afro-Asiatic languages. Languages that use
a full copula include European languages such as German, Dutch, and French. There
are also languages like Russian that “switch” zero and full copula encoding. In Rus-
sian, predicate nominal, predicate adjective and predicate locational constructions have
obligatory zero copula if the sentence refers to the Present. In all other cases (time
reference other than present) the copula byt’ is required.

Copulas also vary in their morphosyntax. In English the copula has verbal character-
istics; it inflects for number and person. In some other languages, the copula functions as
a supportive item that lacks morphological features and is considered to be a nonverbal
copula.

There are also languages that have one copular root such as be in English or two
different copulas such as ser and ester in Spanish and Portuguese.

Crosslinguistic differences of the copula makes it interesting to study since they allow
us to test if children show similar patterns of copula use that are not dependent on the
language they are acquiring. For example, Becker [2001] claims that English speaking
children go through a stage of copula omission that reflects a UG distinction. Specifi-
cally, she claims that English child language marks the universal Individual Level/ Stage
Level 1 (henceforth IL and SL) distinction in the syntax by omitting the copula be
(zero copula) in SL predicates but overtly realizing it (full copula) in Individual Level

predicates. This pattern of copula omission is taken by Becker as evidence that English

 

1The Individual / Stage level distinction is due to Carlson (1977) who distinguishes between predicates
that apply to individuals and describe “permanent” properties and predicates that apply to stages of
individuals and describe “temporary” properties.

speaking children are sensitive to the same UG principle that is grammaticized in several
languages like Spanish. Generally speaking, the Spanish copula ester is considered to
be the SL copula and ser the IL copula in Spanish. If English-speaking children mark
a distinction that is not present in the input and do it in a systematic way, they must
be following a universal principle. In this sense, English child language is marking the
same distinction that Spanish language marks by using two lexically different copulas.

In sum, the copulas are very frequent but complex in terms of the relation between
form and meaning. Therefore they become an interesting testing ground for theories

that attempt to explain how meaning is acquired.
The status of the copula

It is traditionally accepted that the copula is semantically empty and therefore it does
not contribute meaning to the predicates it appears with. Under this view the copula is
believed to be a carrier of inflectional features. It is merely seen as a functional element
devoid of lexical meaning. However, both Rohstein [1999] and Stassen [1997] provide
arguments against the view of the copula as just a carrier of inflectional features.

As Rohstein [1999] points out there are several problems with viewing the copula
as a ‘dummy’ item. We are going to refer to only two for expository purposes 2. One
problem concerns complements of Exceptional Case Marking verbs like:

(1) a. Mary considers Jane very clever.
b. Mary considers Jane to be very clever.

If there was no meaning attached to the copula, denotations like ‘very clever’ and
‘be very clever’ should mean the same. Still, Rohstein [1999](p.348) comments that
(1a) “ ‘feel’ more ‘individual level’, inherent, or general...” than (1b).

Another problem has to do with the issue of agentivity effects in small clauses.

Rothstein illustrates that in bare infinitives the optional presence of be induces a meaning

 

”The reader is referred to the original work for a complete and detailed analysis of the other problems
with Dummy be. See also Rothstein’s proposal.

change:

(2) a. Mary made Jane polite.
b. Mary made Jane be polite.

As Rethstein observes, if be is truly a dummy item, both sentences in (2) should
mean the same.

Another criticism to the idea that the copula is just a carrier of Infl comes from the
typological front. Stassen [1997] observes that the Dummy Hypothesis (the copula is
devoid of lexical meaning) might well result from the need to explain instances of Zero
copula in Indo—European languages. He notes that in this family of languages the Zero
copula option (in nominal predicates) is generally restricted to the present tense and very
often to the third person of the present tense. Stassen argues that “the present tense is
the morphologically unmarked form in the verbal system” in Indo—European, and that
these markedness phenomena support a causal relation of the Dummy Hypothesis: the
Zero copula appears in those contexts in which verbal categories are absent or unmarked.

According to Stassen some of the numerous empirical problems that the Dummy
Hypothesis faces include the following issues:

a. In Latin (Indo-European) the first, second and third person are characterized by
Zero encoding for Tense, Aspect and Mood (TAM). However, the zero copula in Latin
was more frequent with third person than with the other two forms. Still, nothing makes
the third person unmarked when compared to the first and second person in Latin.

b. In many ancient lndo-European languages such as Avestan and some currently
existing languages like Hungarian, a zero copula is obligatory with third person present
in nominal constructions but an overt full copula is obligatory for the third person in
locative constructions.

c. The Dummy Hypothesis cannot explain cases of languages that are marked for
Tense, Aspect and Mood (TAM) and allow a zero copula or these languages that are

unmarked for TAM-forms but disallow a Zero copula. Stassen shows that in Sinhalese

(Indo-European-Indic) there are no unmarked TAM-forms and still zero copula encoding
is available. He also reports that many Papuan and Australian languages do allow a
Zero copula while having marked TAM-forms.

If the idea of a TAM carrier is on the wrong track, the issue is what is the role and
semantic import of the copula. In cases where there are more than one copula the issue
is not different. In Spanish, for example, there are two copulas ser and ester. If the
distinct behavior of ser and ester is found to follow from features that are part of the
semantics of the copulas, it will be difficult to maintain that the Spanish copula is a
mere holder of functional categories. Intuitively, the existence of two different copulas
suggests that some sort of semantic distinction between the copulas should be operative.

In the following section 1.2, I introduce some techniques for assessing child linguistic
competence and briefly give some examples of the type of linguistic knowledge they
reveal. Then in 1.2.2, I give general arguments in favor of carrying out studies that
assess comprehension. The particular need for assessing child comprehension of the
copula will become evident in section 1.3 as I review previous studies of the copula in

first language acquisition.

1.2 First language acquisition studies

1.2.1 Production, comprehension and judgment studies

Linguists have used three broad modalities to assess children’s linguistic competence:
namely, production, comprehension and judgments tasks. All modalities have proved
to be extremely useful to reveal children’s grammar. The selection of the modath
will greatly depend on the particular structure that is being dealt with. Examples of
structures that are particularly well suited for the three different modalities are given
below:

a) Production

Production data have been useful in the investigation of grammatical morphology

(Brown [1973]) and the pro-drop parameter (Hyams [1986], Valian [1991]). Production
data, specifically, elicited production tasks have also assisted linguists in the investiga-
tion of whether children respect constraints that follow from universal principles. For
example, Thornton [1990] carried out an elicited production task that showed that
children (just as adults do) obey the constraint against wanna contraction when a wh-
phrase is extracted from the subject position as in (3) while knowing that the constraint

does not apply when the wh-phrase is extracted from the object position as in (4):

(3) * Who do you wanna kiss Bill?

(4) Who do you wanna kiss t ?

Based on this study, Thornton concluded that the constraint on wanna contraction
must be innate since children had a stronger preference for using wanna when extracting
from the object position than when extracting from subject position.

b) Comprehension

As comprehension studies allow linguists to verify if children understand what they
produce and to investigate if they have some linguistic knowledge before they are able
to produce it, they are an essential complement to production studies. The use of both
modalities reveals a more complete and complex picture of early linguistic competence.

Comprehension studies are particularly well suited for investigation of linguistic
knowledge in infants (Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkofl' [1996]). They have also proved to
be useful in assessing children’s semantic interpretation of contrasts in sentence com-
prehension. For example, Katz et a1. [1974] showed that very young children who still
do not produce determiners are able to determine that a novel word is a proper or a
common noun based on the presence or absence of a determiner.

c) Judgment

In judgment tasks the child is required to give a bipolar response on whether what

is said is a good or true description of a particular situation. There are two known

kinds of judgment tasks, the Truth-Value Judgment task (TVJ) (Crain [1991]) and the
Grammaticality Judgment Task (Mc Daniel and Cairns [1996]). The simplicity of the
children’s response makes the judgment task a useful method for gathering significant
amounts of information regarding children’s linguistic knowledge. Judgment studies are
well suited for investigating different areas in syntax such as the binding theory and
aspects of the syntax/ semantics interface such as children’s interpretation of quantifiers
(Reeper and De Villiers [1991]).

In this thesis I will use both comprehension and judgment data. Thanks to pro—
duction studies such as corpus and elicited production studies (Sera [1992]) we already
know that Spanish-speaking children use ser and ester similarly to adults (see section
1.3 for more details about these studies). That is, children make minimal mistakes when
producing the copula. Because of this I will use comprehension and judgment data in
order to investigate whether Spanish-speaking children have indeed an adult-like under-

standing of ser and ester.

1.2.2 The need for testing comprehension

Although production studies have shed light on many aspects of language acquisition,
it is reasonable to think that children know more than what they produce. It is possible
that contextual cues help them in spontaneous settings and that therefore their pro-
duction might not completely represent their linguistic competence. It is also possible
that their production might be poor because of processing constraints. That children
know more than what they produce is widely accepted in the language acquisition field.
It is well known that children sometimes cannot produce structures they understand;
there is dissociation between production and comprehension. The fact that children’s
production might lag behind comprehension has contributed to the general assumption
that comprehension must precede production. Linguists assume that if a child produces
certain structure correctly she must have analyzed and understood it first. Although

the problem of production is important since, if a child understands a structure but

10

cannot produce it properly implies that his output cannot be considered to attest his
linguistic competence 3 we should not ignore the inverse possibility, that children pro-
duce grammatical structures without understanding the syntactic/semantic properties
as adults do.

Comprehension studies are necessary in order to check whether children really un-
derstand what they produce. There are at least two studies that show that children can
correctly produce functional categories without comprehending them.

De Villiers and Johnson [2001] conducted a comprehension study to test children’s
sensitivity to the 3rd person marker /s/ in English and found that children as old as
6 years-old do not use this grammatical marker in order to (1) determine number of
the subject (The cat sleep vs. The cat sleeps), (2) differentiate verbs from noun-noun
compounds (The orange drinks vs. The orange drink), and (3) to discriminate past
from generic (Who just cut the bread? vs. Who just cuts the bread?). This finding is
surprising since, as De Villiers and Johnson claim, children are producing this piece of
verbal morphology flawlessly by age 4 (See Brown 1973).

A second study that also provides evidence that production ability does not neces—
sarily imply comprehension is Wagner [2001]. Her study shows that 2 year—old-children
use aspect information, specifically the notions of completion vs. incompletion in or-
der to understand verbal tense 4. Specifically, she found that 2 year-olds (range 2;2—
2;11) fail to recognize the past tense when an event is incomplete while 3 to 4 year-olds
had no problem differentiating past and present tenses when the past-time event was
either complete or incomplete. She concludes that children at early stages of language

acquisition use verbal morphology information to code aspectual information and not

 

3See Smolensky’s (1996) proposal to the comprehension / production problem in child language. How-
ever, since this thesis is concerned with the general issue of comprehension (without assuming that it
precedes comprehension) and because Smolensky’s proposal assumes that comprehension precedes pro-
duction, we are not going to consider it any further.

4She also finds evidence that small children do interpret tense markers. This finding, as she ac-
knowledges, argues against the Aspect lst hypothesis. However, Wagner still considers that aspect is
either opening the door for or helping in the interpretation of tense morphology, based on the results
of a second experiment.

11

necessarily to code tense information. This result shows that even when the 2 year-old-
children are producing past and present tense morphology correctly they still do not

fully understand the semantics of these markers.

1.3 Previous studies

Our only references for investigating the acquisition of ser and ester comes from a study
by Becker [2001], done in English and another study by Sera [1992] done in Spanish.
Both studies considered production but not comprehension. In this section I am going
to consider their main findings very briefly as I am going to review their studies in some
detail in chapter 2. Becker’s analysis attempts to explain the tendency that English-
speaking children use an overt copula with nominal predicates while omitting it with
locative predicates. Thus English speaking children would produce sentences like:

(5) a. Sally is a teacher.
b. Sally in the garden.

Becker observed a similar behavior in adjective predicatives:

(6) a. Sally is tall.
b. Sally sick.

Becker accounts for these facts by claiming that children follow a universal distinc-
tion between predicates. In Nominals (5a) the predicate head assigns “permanent” or
“inherent” properties to the subject while in Locatives (5b), the predicate head assigns
“temporary” or “non-inherent” properties to the subject. If the property assigned to
the subject is “permanent” the predicate is called an Individual Level predicate but if
the property assigned is “temporary” the predicate is called a Stage-Level predicate 5.
Becker claims that children notice the universal semantic distinction between SLPs and

ILPs and that they mark it syntactically by using a null or an overt copula. Conse-

 

5The reader is referred to chapter 2 for further and detailed consideration of theoretical issues.

12

quently, English speaking children mark a SL predicate with a null (zero) copula and
an IL predicate with an overt inflected copula.

The implication of Becker’s analysis to the acquisition of the copula lies in that she
assumes that very young children are already marking differences between predicates
based on the semantic notions of “permanent” and “temporary”. Therefore, an inter-
esting question is whether Spanish speaking children distinguish between ser and ester
based on semantic notions.

In the Spanish study, Sera [1992] investigated whether children knew that ser was
the copula for “permanent” properties and ester for “temporary” properties. She argued
that children explicitly classify adjectives as either holding a ser or an ester status. In
another task, Sera investigated whether Spanish speaking children use ser for nominal
constructions and ester for locatives. She also investigated whether children use ester
to describe the location of events as well as objects. In Spanish, locative sentences
with events as subjects require ser while sentences with objects requires ester. This is

illustrated in (7).

(7) a. La fiesta es en casa de Pepa.
‘The party is in Pepa’s house.’
b. La pelota esta en casa de Pepa.
‘The ball is in Pepa’s house.’

Sera reports that Spanish-speaking children know the locative use of ester but make
no distinction between the location of objects and events. Based on this result, Sera
claims that children have a less semantic basis than adults. She observes that children
seem to be using ester with locatives perhaps because they rely on the preposition. As
the classification of the sentential subject must be semantic and they are making mis-
takes here, they cannot be using semantic information. Sera concluded that children’s
choices of the copula are governed by the classification of the predicate.

Sera’s finding is interesting because it suggests that Spanish speaking children may

be using distributional information in order to use the correct copula. This contrasts

l3

with the analysis provided by Becker that assumes that English speaking children are
distinguishing between types of predicates based on semantic notions. Notice that in
Sera’s study, children failed to make a semantic distinction between objects and events
when selecting the appropriate copula. Based on the findings of Sera’s and Becker’s
studies, it would be interesting to investigate if Spanish-speaking children comprehend
the different meanings of ser and ester. Also, we need to investigate what type of
information whether syntactic, semantic or pragmatic, children use in order to acquire
ser and ester.

In order to do this, we need both a complete description and an adequate account
of how ser and ester are used by Spanish-speaking adults. In the next chapter I will
address the theoretical aspects and problems involved in the use and acquisition of ser
and ester. I will also show that a correct characterization of the Spanish copula is only

possible if we take into account the aspectual and discourse factors that affect their use.

1.4

Chapter 2

Theoretical and acquisition aspects
of ser and ester

In this chapter I will focus on the theoretical proposals that have been advanced so far
to account for ser and ester. First I provide a general description of the distribution and
interpretation of ser and ester. Then I consider three different approaches to analyzing
the Spanish copulas: semantic, semantic-syntactic and pragmatic accounts. I will show
that although none of the analyzes is able to deal with the complexity of their behavior,
they allow one to understand the basic properties of the two verbs and outline the basic
components that any analysis must have in order to account for them, which will be
relevant to the acquisition problem. I finally review the two studies on copula acquisition
(that were briefly discussed in Chapter 1) by English and Spanish-speaking children and

refer to some interesting questions regarding child language acquisition of ser and ester.

2.1 Descriptive accounts of ser and ester

2. 1 .1 Distribution

Spanish has two copula verbs. They have specific uses and they are not interchangeable.

This is illustrated in (1):

15

(1) a. Maria es/#esta lista.

‘M. is intelligent.’

b. Maria #es/esta lista.
‘M. is ready.’

c. Maria es/*esta maestra.
‘M. is a teacher.’

(1. Maria es/*esta de Espafia.
‘M. is from Spain.’

e. Maria *es/esta de luto.
‘M. is in mourning.’

While both copulas take adjectival ((1a) and (1b) 1 and prepositional phrases ((1d)
and (1e)) as complements, nominals appear with ser but not estar(lc).

There are cases in which the incompatibility of certain predicates with either ser or
ester seems to be syntactic and/or semantic. Since in this thesis I am concerned with
the use of the copula with adjectives, I will mainly focus on adjectival constructions.
Let us then consider important distributive differences between adjective predicates with
ser and ester. Although it is true that both copulas take adjective complements, and

that many adjectives are compatible with both ser and ester, not all adjectives are

compatible with both copulas. The sentences in (2) illustrate this point.

(2) a. Maria es/esta bonita/alegre/callada.
‘M. ispretty/happy/quiet.’
b. Juan *es/esta peinado/cansado.
‘J .is combed/ tired.’
c. Juan es/?esta inteligente/sincero.
‘J .is intelligent/sincere.’

In Spanish certain adjectives, as exemplified in (2a), can appear with both copulas;
most participial adjectives can go with ester, but are incompatible with copula ser as
illustrated in (2b). Also certain adjectives are not usually acceptable with copula ester

as exemplified in (2c) 2.

 

1Note that the adjectives are interpreted as having different meanings. See below section 2.1.2.

2It is worthwhile to point out that while the incompatibility between ser and participial adjectives
seems to derive from some type of restriction imposed by the grammar, and therefore sentences like
(2b) are always ruled out, sentence (2c) with ester is acceptable in certain marked contexts. A possible
context in which (2c) with ester is acceptable would be one in which Juan, who is generally a stupid or
dishonest person, woke up showing signs of intelligence or sincerity. Hence, while the ungrammatical

l6

Another interesting case in which ser and ester show different distributions is that
of prepositional complements and purpose clauses. Ester but not ser can take “de” (of)
complements and purpose clauses. Example (3) below illustrates that while both copulas

are compatible with the adjective aburrido ‘bored’, ser cannot take “de” complements.

(3) a. Pedro es/esta aburrido.
‘P. is boring/bored.’
b. Pedro *es /esta aburrido de ver televisién.
‘P. is bored of watching TV.’

The same restriction applies to the sentence when a purpose clause is added. Only
ester is acceptable in the presence of a purpose clause. This is illustrated in (4) (Schmitt

[1996]’s original example in Portuguese):

(4) a. Juan es/esta ansioso.
‘Juan is anxious.’
b. Juan *es/esta ansioso por terminar el artfculo.
‘Juan is anxious to finish the paper.’

Now that we have seen some of the most relevant peculiarities in the distribution of

ser and ester let us turn to the interpretative differences that follow from them.

2. 1 .2 Interpretation

We saw in the previous section that certain adjectives can appear with both copulas.
With some of these adjectives, the combination with either ser or ester will be associated

with different lexical meanings. This is illustrated in (5).
(5) a. Juan es vivo.
‘Juan is intelligent.’

b. Juan esta vivo.
‘Juan is alive.’

As we see in (5) when vivo has the interpretation of intelligent, only the copula ser

is possible. When vivo is used with the alive meaning, only ester is possible.

 

example (2b) seems to be ruled out on syntax-semantic grounds, it is not clear what is causing the
marginality of estd + inteligente in (2c).

17

With other adjectives, the combination with either ser or ester yields a different
interpretation of the predicate but the adjective keeps the same lexical meaning. This

is illustrated in (6).

(6) a. Maria es callada.
Maria is quiet
‘Maria is a quiet person.’
b. Maria esta callada.
Maria is quiet
‘Maria is being quiet right now.’

Traditional approaches have accounted for the ser/ ester opposition in terms of
semantic notions. Belle [1951] treats ser as expressing a permanent quality of the
subject and ester as expressing a transitory quality. For example in (6a) Maria is
described as having the permanent quality of being a quiet person while in (6b) Maria
is described as having the transitory quality of being quiet. By the same token, Gili Gaya
[1955] argues that ser is used for inherent situations and ester for circumstantial and
contingent states. More lately, Vafié—Cerdé. [1982] comes up with a distinction in terms
of intrinsic and objective quality for ser versus extrinsic and subjective quality for ester.
Other scholars have proposed that ser implies no change while ester does. Although
it is true that these explanations can account for some cases, none of them capture a
straightforward generalization and therefore lack predictive power. Counterexamples to

these semantic notions are abundant. Delbecque [1997] notes that the adjectives that

mean “temporariness”, “circumstance” never take ester. This fact is illustrated in (7).

(7) a. La locura de Juan es/*esta temporal.
‘Juan’s craziness is temporary.’
b. Su estado es / *esta transitorio.
‘His state is transitory.’

Another typical counterexample is posed by the adjective muerto ‘dead’. The pre-
diction of using the copula for permanent states such as ‘being dead’ is not met in this

case:

18

(8) Juan *es/esta muerto.
‘Juan is dead.’

Also, if “permanency” versus “temporariness” of a property were the distinction at
work when selecting the copula, the sequence ser joven ‘being young’ should always be
constructed as ester joven. Actually, the adjective joven can take both copulas. Notice
that in sentence (9), the property of ‘being young’ cannot last longer than the property
of ‘being alive’. However, the adjective alive is used with ester and the adjective young
is used with ser.

(9) Juan esta vivo...Y es joven!
‘Juan is alive...And he is young!’

2.2 Theoretical accounts of ser and ester in adjec-
tive constructions

2.2.1 Semantic accounts

A compelling analysis of differences of interpretation between ser and ester is the one
proposed by Lujan [1981]. Lujan’s semantic analysis is interesting in three respects.
First, she observes an important semantic relation between the two copulas, namely
that ester can be a subset of ser. Second, she incorporates the study of adjective
semantics and characterizes adjectives as having aspectual properties; and third, she
draws a distinction between the two Spanish copulas in terms of “perfectivity”. These
three points are crucial for distinguishing between ser and ester. Let us consider them
in detail:

Lujan notices that ser and ester stand in an entailment relationship, in which ester

is a subset of ser. She illustrates this point by assigning truth-values to the sentences

in (1.0).

19

(10) a. Luisa esta gorda/bonita/alegre porque es gorda/bonita/alegre. (Tfue)
‘Luisa is fat /pretty/happy because she is fat /pretty/happy.’

b. Luisa es gorda/bonita/alegre porque esta gorda/bonita/alegre. (False)
‘Luisa is fat /pretty/happy because she is fat/pretty/ happy.’

Lujan’s analysis accounts for the difference in interpretation of cases such as (2a)

above, now repeated as (11) and (1.2). The actual interpretation is in parentheses.

(11) a. Maria es bonita.
(Maria is a pretty woman)
b. Maria esta bonita.
(Maria looks pretty new)
‘M. is pretty.’

(12) a. Maria es callada.
(Maria is a quiet person)
b. Maria esta callada.
(Maria is being quiet right now)
’M. is quiet.’

For Lujan, (11b) entails (11a) and (12b) entails (12a) but the opposite, that the
respective examples in (a) entail examples in (b) is not possible. In other words, ester
entails ser but ser does not entail ester.

I agree with the partial validity of this entailment relationship between the copulas.
However, I would like to point out that this generalization is only valid when both
sentences with ser and ester refer to the same exact slice of time. For the entailment
relation to hold it is necessary that both sentences in (11) and (12) be true in the real
world. For example, in (11), Maria has to be a pretty person and also look pretty at
the speech moment. Notice that it is possible that Maria can be pretty and at the same
time not look pretty as (13) exemplifies.

( 13) Maria es bonita pero hoy esta fea. Se levanté con una cara terrible.
‘M. is usually pretty but she looks ugly today. She woke up with a terrible face.’

20

Therefore, the notion that estar+ adjective entails ser + adjective is not an absolute
generalization.
Now, I am going to focus on the other two points of her analysis. According to

Lujan, the Spanish copulas differ in their intrinsic semantic features:

(14) 381" ester
< ICOP > < +COP >
< -[ / ~— Stetz‘ve > < +Statz've >
< —Perfective > < +Perfectz've >

She also divides adjectives in three groups based on whether they occur with ser or
with ester or with both copulas: Group 1 contains the adjectives that typically go with
ser. Group 2 includes adjectives that could only go with ester and group 3 includes
adjectives that appear with either copula. She assigns < + / - perfectivity > features to
these adjectives, showing that adjectives can also be specified for aspectual properties.
Thus, adjectives that typically go with ser are < —Per f active >, adjectives that only go
with ester are < +Perfectz've > and adjectives that are acceptable with both copulas
are neutral in terms of perfectivity.

Since Lujan claims that ser is < -Perfect'ive > and ester is < l Perfective > and
because adjectives are to be differentiated based on whether they carry a perfectivity
feature as well, her analysis allows us to account for the cases of incompatibility between
copula and adjectives that we already described. Consider again the sentences in (2b)

and (2c), now repeated as (15a) and (15b).

(15) a. Juan *es/esta peinado/cansado.
‘J. is combed/tired.’
b. Juan es/?esta inteligente/sincere.
‘J. is intelligent/sincere.’

Since “es” in (15a) is < —Perfect'ive > and adjectives censedo and pez'nedo are
< +Perfect2've >, there is a semantic/aspectual clash. A similar clash would re-

sult in (15b) in which the < + Per fectz’ve > copula ester is incompatible with the

21

< —Per f ectz've > adjectives inteligente and sincere. Of course, we still need to explain
why the marginal case in (15b) is not as bad as the ungrammatical (15a) with copula
ser. An attempt to explain this asymmetry will be put forward in section 2.2.4 of this
chapter, in which I propose to consider a newer analysis of the differences between ser
and ester.

Also, there is a problem of descriptive adequacy with Lujan’s proposal that copulas
and adjectives are marked for the feature < + / — Per fective >. It is not clear that ester
and ester -type adjectives (participial adjectives) are specified for a < +Perfect'ive >
feature since they do not necessarily presuppose an ending point. In ( 16) there is nothing

telling us that the state of being ‘pretty’ and ‘tired’ is going to end.

(16) a. Maria esta bonita.
‘Maria is pretty.’
b. Maria esta cansada.
‘Maria is tired.’

Notice that we can add the temporal adverbial siempre (forever) and no semantic

clash arises:

(17) a. Maria esté siempre bonita.
‘M. is always pretty.’
b. Maria esta siempre cansada.
‘M is always tired.’

The sentences in (16) only tell us that Maria’s state of being ‘pretty’ and ‘tired’ is
holding right now (at speech time). A speaker who utters (16a) and (16b) does not assert
that the states of being pretty or tired will either hold or end in the future. Actually,
ester in the present tense does not assert anything related to past or future time; it just
asserts that the state holds at utterance time, unless an adverb such as siempre ’always’
is added, forcing a reading where a particular state holds more than at utterance time.

So far we have seen that the semantic analysis proposed by Lujan offers a more
complete and attractive account of the differences in distribution and interpretation of

the Spanish copulas than previous analyzes. However, her analysis is stipulative and

22

still inadequate. In the next section, I will refer to some more recent syntactic/ semantics
analyzes that intend to account for the differences in the usage of the Spanish copula.
In the remainder of this section I review other theoretical accounts of the ser and ester

copulas with adjectival predicates.

2.2.2 Syntactic-semantic accounts

Two influential analyzes of copular constructions that might be used to explain the
opposition of ser and ester in Spanish are the ones proposed by Diesing [1988, 1992]
and Kratzer [1989, 1995] 3. Before considering the details of their proposals we need
to refer very briefly to the Individual Level and Stage Level semantic distinction be-
tween predicates put forward by Carlson [1977]. This is important since Diesing’s and
Kratzer’s analyzes are an attempt to give a syntactic/semantic account of the different
interpretations that these predicates receive.

Carlson [1977] draws a distinction between two kinds of predicates: Stage-Level
Predicates (SLPs) characterize properties of stages and Individual-Level Predicates
(ILPs) characterize properties of individuals. In Carlson’s terms, a stage is a “space-time
slice” of an individual (p.128) while individuals are “a series of stages [..] of the same
thing” (p. 115). Carlson motivates this distinction based on the acceptability of certain
predicates as complements of perception verbs. He observed that only predicates that
express transitory or accidental qualities (SLPs) but not those that express permanent
or essential qualities (ILPs) are acceptable as complements of perception verbs. This is
illustrated in (18).

(18) a. *John saw Jane intelligent.
b. John saw Jane tired.
The predicate intelligent in Carlson’s terminology is an ILP because intelligent is

a permanent property that applies to individuals, while the predicate tired is a SLP

 

3Actually, to account for Carlson’s Stage/Individual level distinction, Diesing (1990) suggests that
ser and ester may correlate with the IL and SL predicates respectively.

23

because it denotes a transitory property that applies to stages of an individual. In Carl-
son’s view this distinction is responsible for the different interpretations of bare plurals.
He observes that bare plural subjects with ILPs cannot have an existential reading while
SPLs have existential readings and in special circumstances generic readings.
(19) a. Dogs are mammals. (generic only)
b. Dogs are in the park. (generic and existential)

In order to account for these facts and for the interpretation of other indefinites,
Diesing [1992] and Kratzer [1995] propose that the semantic IL/SL distinction fol-
lows from differences in argument structure. Specifically, Kratzer argues that Diesing’s
proposal that subjects of ILPs and SLPs may be in different syntactic positions is a
consequence of a difference in argument structure: SLPs have an extra argument (“e”
argument) that is mapped in the external argument position while ILPs do not. This
forces subjects of SLP to be generated inside the VP and ILP subjects to be generated
outside VP. They both assume Heim [1982] proposal that i) indefinites are open formu-
las that contain a free variable that undergoes an operation of existential closure and
ii) that sentences are mapped to a tripartite Logical Form that consists of a quantifier,
a restrictive clause and a nuclear scope.

For Diesing, material from the VP is mapped into the nuclear scope where the
variable undergoes existential closure while the material from the IP is mapped into a
restrictive clause and, if there is not an overt operator present, a generic null operator
is inserted giving rise to the only possible reading: generic. Since the subject of an
SLP is generated inside the VP, it can either raise to Spec IP or stay in the VP, and
therefore can receive both interpretations. In ILPs the subject is generated in IP and
cannot reconstruct to VP. Therefore it only receives a generic reading.

For Kratzer, SLPs have a Davidsonian argument that has the function to locate in
space and time the property or event that is predicated. The Davidsonian argument has

the form of a variable that can be bound by an adverbial or by existential closure. The

24

presence of this extra argument in SLPs but not in ILPs would explain why SLPs but
not ILPs can appear with certain kinds of adverbials. This is shown in the following

classical examples:

(20) a. *When Mary knows anch, she knows it well.
b. When a Moroccan knows French, she knows it well.
c. When Mary speaks French, she speaks it well.

(20a) is not acceptable because When does not have anything to quantify over (there
is not a Davidsonian argument to bind since know is an IL head). (20b) on the other
hand is acceptable because When binds the indefinite a Moroccan and (20c) is perfect
since the predicate headed by speak is SL and has a Davidsonian argument.

A problem for the syntactic account is that in the same way as SLPs can have IL
readings, as illustrated in (21) and (22), typical ILPs can be assigned SL readings.

(21) John smoked grass. (from Manninen [2001])
(22) John drank whisky.

That typical ILPs can be assigned a SL reading is illustrated in (23):

(23) a. John was intelligent. (from Manninen)
7 John was (always and without exception) intelligent.
f John behaved in a really stupid way yesterday, but today he was quite intelligent.

A case like (23) cannot be explained easily by using Kratzer’s analysis, unless event
arguments can be added when needed, and much less by making event arguments a
lexical property of Infl.

Diesing suggests that the SL/ IL distinction can be applied to Spanish, namely that
ester and ser correlate with SL and IL predicates respectively. Let us see how her
analysis would account for the Spanish copulas: The subject of ser is generated in IP.
Since it cannot reconstruct to VP, it can only receive a generic reading. The subject

of ester is generated inside the VP. Therefore, it can either raise to IP and receive a

25

generic interpretation or stay in the VP and receive an existential interpretation. This

yields the pattern in (24).

(24) a. Un bombero es altruista. (Only generic)
‘A fireman is altruistic.’
b. Un bombero esta disponible. (generic and existential)
‘A fireman is available.’

The indefinite subject in (24a) with copula ser can only receive a generic reading
while the indefinite in (24b) with ester can be ambiguous between an existential and
generic reading.

However, Schmitt [1992] provides evidence against considering ser and ester as the
IL and the SL copulas, respectively. She considers the following data from Portuguese
(that hold for Spanish too):

(25) Sempre que Maria é rude/cruel/gentil, ela é mesmo rude/ cruel.
‘When(ever) Maria is rude/cruel, gentle, she is really rude/ cruel.’

(26) Sempre que Clark Kent é Superman, a cidade esta segura.
‘When(ever) Clark Kent is Superman, the city is safe.’

She observes that, if we follow Kratzer’s analysis, both sentences (25) and (26)
need to project a Davidsonian argument. The problem is that we cannot maintain the
generalization that ser+ predicate is an ILP and ester +predicate is a SLP because
only SLPs are supposed to project a Davidsonian argument according to her analysis.
However, (25) and (26) are acceptable although the verb used is ser.

Schmitt points out that while ester behaves as SL with respect to the Davidsonian
argument, ser does not behave as IL in every case. In order to illustrate this point, she
shows that ser allows an existential interpretation of bare plurals in certain contexts (in

Portuguese) :

26

(27) a. Maria esta sendo cruel.
‘Maria is being cruel.’
b. Ha mulheres sendo cruéis.
‘There are women being cruel.’

If the bare plural in (27b) receives an existential interpretation, why is it that the
copula used is ser and not ester?

As Schmitt shows, a syntactic account that correlates IL and SL predicates with
copulas ser and ester is inadequate to explain the distribution facts of the Spanish and
Portuguese copulas.

Let us now consider Schmitt’s approach to analyzing ser and ester.

There are two important points in Schmitt’s proposal. First, she proposes to consider
Kratzer’s test that only SLPs can be modified by temporal or frequency adverbs to
be reanalyzed as a test for determining if a predicate has the appropriate aspectual
properties 4. And second, she argues that ser is underspecified for aspect whereas ester
is specified for aspectual properties.

In order to support her claim that the adverbial when{ever) selects for aspectual

properties Schmitt provides the following example:

(28) a. *Sempre que Joao comeu a/uma sobremesa, ele ficou doente.
‘When(ever) Joao ate (Perf.) the/ a dessert, he got sick.’
b. Sempre que 0 Joan comia a/uma sobremesa, ele ficava doente.
‘When(ever) Joao ate (Imperf.) the/a dessert, he got (Imperf.) sick.’
In (28) the verb eat cannot be perfective because the use of when(ever) forces the
clause to be interpreted as distributed over time. Notice that the type of predicate (SL)
is entirely irrelevant in the presence of the adverbial. What is crucial in this case is
that the same sentence is acceptable if the aspect is imperfective. By arguing that the

adverb when{ever) is sensitive to the aspect of the clause it interacts with, Schmitt’s

analysis can easily account for sentence (29) that is problematic for Kratzer’s syntactic

 

4Aspect can be seen as a way of encoding the temporal properties of an event. Thus either predicate
is marked as being temporal, occurring in time or not.

27

account (Schmitt’s original is in Portuguese):

(29) Siempre que Maria es cruel, ella es muy cruel.
‘When(ever) Maria is rude, she is really cruel.’

In (29), the copula ser receives an Act he interpretation (Partee [1977]) and the
clause receives an aspectual reading. Notice that by claiming that ser is underspecified
for aspect, Schmitt accounts for the possibility of ser receiving a SL interpretation and
it follows naturally that the interpretation of ser will depend on the type of predicate
it takes. This is an elegant solution to the problem of how to explain the different
interpretations that ser receives without having to stipulate two lexical entries for ser.
Ester, on the other hand, will always receive a SL interpretation since it is aspectually
specified 5.

So far we have seen that both syntactic and semantic accounts of ser and ester are
not satisfactory and that an aspectual analysis of the Spanish and Portuguese copulas
seems to be more appropriate. Importantly, an analysis that considers the aspectual
properties of ser and ester allows us to get rid of the problematic accounts based on the
IL/SL distinction. However, if we are to understand the behavior of ser and ester, an
aspectual analysis is not enough. We need to relate the aspectual properties observed so
far to the way ser and ester are used in the discourse. Because they can both be used
with various types of predicates, the choice seems to be dependent on different discourse

conditions. The sentence in (30) illustrates this.

 

5Becker (2001) proposes an analysis of the Spanish copulas that introduces basic aspects from
Carlson’s, Diesing and Kratzer’s, and Schmitt’s analyses. She believes in a strong mapping between
syntax and semantics and therefore assumes that the IL/SL semantic distinction first proposed by
Carlson has a syntactic representation. She also incorporates Schmitt’s aspectual analysis of the Spanish
copulas and proposes that ester projects and AspP while ser only selects lexical predicates and does
not project any AspP. In Becker’s analysis, ester is the SL copula and ser the IL copula. As we
already saw, this cannot be correct since there is not an exact correspondence between either semantic
or syntactic notions and copula choice.

28

(30) a. Maria es linda.
‘Maria is pretty’(Maria is a pretty girl).
b. Maria esta linda.
‘Maria looks pretty right now’(Maria may not be a pretty girl).

Clearly, in order to properly understand the use of the copulas it is necessary to

investigate also their pragmatic properties.

2.2.3 Pragmatic accounts

In the previous sections I have argued that neither a semantic nor a syntactic account
of the Spanish copula can fully deal with the distribution of ser and ester. Also, I
have claimed that an aspectual analysis of the copulas is necessary but not sufficient to
describe their uses. In this section I consider the only analysis (that I know of) that deals
with the semantic-pragmatic factors that constrain the use of the copulas in Spanish.
We will see that such an analysis is adequate when it comes to describe the different
uses of the copula but that it is not completely satisfactory account of the distribution
facts of ser and ester.

Clements [1988] proposes an analysis of the Spanish copulas in adjectival construc-
tions that takes into account the semantics of each copula; and the semantic and prag-
matic factors regarding 1) the sentence subject (referent, therefore R), 2) the point of
view of the Speaker (S), and 3) the understood beliefs we have about the nature of
states and characteristics denoted by adjectives.

For Clements the two copulas can be distinguished in terms of the presence or absence
of the feature < Nexus >. Nexus is defined as a connection to the position of the
Referent (subject) in space or to a prior or assumed state or situation of the Referent.
Ser is < —Nea:us > because its semantics does not presuppose any type of connection
to either location or a previous state of R, while ester is < +Nexus > because it
presupposes it. He illustrates this contrast with the following cases (his examples (20a)

and (20b)):

29

(31) a. Para su edad Pepe es bien alto. < —Ne:rus >
‘For his age, Pepe is quite tall.’
b. Pepe iQué alto estas! < +Nexus >
‘Pepe, how tall you are! (how much you have grown)’

In (31) both copulas are grammatical with adjective tall. The view of the speaker
(S) becomes crucial. If the speaker classifies the Referent according to a class norm (a
norm valid for a group), he will use ser such as in (31a). If the speaker classifies R
according to an individual norm he will use ester such as in (31b).

Clements’ analysis also takes into account the kind of adjectives. He argues that if
we only consider the distinction between the copulas and the view of the speaker we
could conclude that any copula could go in any copulative sentence. This is certainly
not true. There are adjectives such as ancho ‘wide’ that present a (Resultative) feature
that allows the Speaker to select either a class norm or an individual norm. The speaker

overrides the < +nezus > interpretation when using this type of adjectives:

(32) a. La carretera es ancha ahora. < —Nea:us >
‘The road is wide now’

b. Qué ancha esta la carretera. < lNexus >
‘How wide the road is’

Again, this is not enough. The ancha-type adjectives imply a contrast to a prior
situation. There are other adjectives that denote only a resultative state without any
implicit comparison. These adjectives are marked < +Resultetive > and they are
only compatible with ester < +Nerrus >. These are the adjectives (called participial
adjectives) that give rise to ungrammatical sentences if ser is used. Notice however, as

Clements acknowledges, that there are exceptions:

(33) a. Pedro es/esta contento.
‘Peter is happy.’
b. Pedro es/esta callado.
‘Peter is quiet.’
c. Con el vestido rojo estas preciosa.
‘In the red dress you look precious.’

30

Also as Clements points out, as illustrated in (33c), not only participial adjectives
can be combined with < +Nemus > ester.

An interesting point of his analysis relates to the aspectual properties of adjectives.
In addition to some pragmatic constraints in the interpretation of R, such as < +/ —
Animate >, Clements proposes a semantic-pragmatic view of adjectives that is based on
general beliefs humans have regarding the nature of events and processes. His proposal
can be summarized as follows. There are three main types of adjectives: adjectives with
no possible dynamic underlying situation, Event ADJs (that denote a resultant state of
an event but do not imply a contrast according to a given individual norm of S (e.g.
be angry) and Process Adjectives (adjectives that can be used to denote a stage in a
process (e.g. tall)). In order to make the right predictions he needs to add a subsequent
distinction in terms of directionality.

Clements’ proposal is attractive in two ways. First, it is a good description of
the copula+adjective construction facts and second, it is one of the first analyzes of the
copula that takes into account pragmatic factors. However, it fails to provide a principled
account of the copula. Although copular constructions in Spanish are complex in nature
since they require certain pragmatic considerations, unless some of these features and
classifications can be independently motivated, we have an ad hoc distinction. In the
following section, I propose that we can account for the differences between ser and ester
in adjectival constructions in terms of aspectual specification and discourse saliency. I
will claim that the discourse and pragmatic factors that we observe when using ser and
ester follow from their aspectual status. As a result we do not need to assume different
features for each apparent difference that follows from the use of ser and ester.

We have just seen that several researchers have tried to account for ser and ester
based on syntactic, semantic and pragmatic approaches. This just shows how complex

is to characterize the behavior of ser and ester.

31

2.2.4 Basic preperties of ser and ester

In this section I am going to claim that the difference between ser and ester is better
captured by focusing on both their aspectual and anchoring properties. We will see that
ser is independent from the discourse. I will suggest that the weak aspectual status
of ser makes it subject to be interpreted as possibly having aspectual properties even
though its most natural interpretation is one underspecified with respect to aspect 6.

I am going to follow Schmitt’s analyzes (Schmitt [1992, 1996]) that consider ester as
specified for aspect and ser as underspecified for it. I am also going to consider Schmitt’s
(2002) analysis that treats ester but not ser as denoting a STATE that presupposes a
link to the discourse. Ser is not stative in the sense of ester because it cannot select for
stative eventualities. Schmitt relies on Dowty [1991]’s proposal that nouns and verbs
should be distinguished based on their argument licensing properties. Following Dowty’s
proposal that noun arguments are optional while verb arguments are obligatory, Schmitt
proposes to treat ser as taking [+N] and ester as taking [+V] predicates (see Schmitt
[1996] for evidence for [+N] and [+V]). Since ser is aspectually underspecified, ser can
only select for predicates [+ N] that are also temporally underspecified. Ester, on the
other hand, is specified for aspect and selects for verbal predicates.

The properties that follow from the fact that ester but not ser is a state can be
summarized as follows: i) ester but not ser will be interpreted monotonically; ii) ser
but not ester will be subject to reinterpretative effects (for example, ester lacks an
Act Be reading), and iii) ser and ester have different selection restrictions. From the
fact that ester but not ser is linked to the discourse, it follows that iv) ester is used
to describe marked properties of its subject; and v) ester but not ser asserts that a

property holds at time t (t = new) with t relative to Tense. Let us see how these points

 

6This is similar to what Caudal and Roussarie (forthcoming) claim to happen to the Imparfait
in Hench. According to these authors, the Imparfait is aspectually underspecified since it dam not
contribute a perfective vieWpoint but it is not incompatible with a perfective vieWpoint. Therefore,
although the Imparfait never describes transitions, when inserted into an appropriate context it can
acquire a transitional flavor that is a contextual interpretative effect rather than an intrinsic part of
the semantics of the French Imparfait.

32

get support from the behavior of ser and ester. It is important to notice that these

characteristics are all intertwined.

Ester forces monotonic inferences while ser allows nonmonotonic inferences
similar to the way generics behave

The difference between monotonic and nonmonotonic inferences is easily seen when we
test for entailment relations. Sentence (34a) forces a monotonic inference because it
entails (34b).
(34) a. Bill killed Sue at school.
b. Bill killed Sue.

That ester forces monotonic inferences while ser does not is illustrated in the fol-

lowing sentences:

(35) a. Maria esta aburrida en la fiesta.
‘Maria is bored in the party.’
b. Maria esta aburrida.
‘Maria is bored.’
(36) a. Maria es inteligente en la escuela.
‘Maria is intelligent in the school.’
b. Maria es inteligente.
‘Maria is intelligent.’

Notice that while (35a) entails (35b) since ester is used, (36a)which uses ser does
not entail (36b). Ser like generics is nonmonotonic in that it is not driven by absolute
logic. In other words, nonmonotonicity allows a predicate to cover exceptions to general

rules. Therefore in generics like:

(37) Cuban volleyball players are tall but Regla is short.

Regla, who is the captain of the Cuban women’s volleyball team, is an exception to
the general rule that volleyball players are tall, but it does not make (37) false. In other

words, (37) basically says that in most cases or in general, Cuban volleyball players are

33

tall. I suggest that ser receives a default non-monotonic interpretation because ser does
not assert that a property holds now or permanently. Ester on the other hand, asserts
that a state holds now (when in the present tense). This is illustrated in sentences (38)
and (39):
(38) a. Juana esta cuidadosa hoy.
‘Juana is (SL) careful today.’
b. Juana es cuidadosa a veces.
‘J is (IL) careful sometimes.’

c. ?? Juana esta cuidadosa a veces.
‘J. is (SL) careful sometimes.’

(39) a. Juana esta inteligente hoy.
‘J. is (SL) intelligent today.’
b. Juana es inteligente a veces.
‘J. is (IL) intelligent sometimes.’
c. ??Juana esta inteligente a veces.
‘J. is (SL) intelligent sometimes.’

While in the b cases of (38) and (39) ser+ adjective are compatible with adverb
‘sometimes’, cases in (c) with ester + adjective are unacceptable. I would like to suggest
that (38c) and (39c) are unacceptable because the adverb e veces ‘sometimes’ forces the
property to hold or not to hold iteratively through time. Thus, ester + 0 veces is
contradictory because ester asserts that the state holds but a veces forces the state to
hold and not hold now. Since ester denotes a state that must be anchored to ‘now’,
there is a semantic/aspectual clash and the sentences are ruled out. Sentences (38b) and
(39b) are possible since the property denoted by ser does not need to apply exhaustively.
Thus, (40) is not a contradiction.

(40) Juana es inteligente pero ahora esté. tonta.
‘J. is intelligent but she is (being) fool now.’

From the possible interpretations that ser and ester receive, it is reasonable to

predict that ser should be more difficult for children to acquire than ester, if we take

the Semantic Subset Principle seriously as we will see below.

34

The aspectual preperties of ester cannot be overridden by interpretative
effects while the weak aspectual nature of ser makes it compatible with the
expression of any aspectual viewpoint.

Consider sentence (41) below with the copula ser inflected for simple past. Although
ser is aspectually underspecified (it is not linked to the discourse and cannot hear a <
[7 state > feature), it can be interpreted aspectually, if the context allows it. The simple
past tense is the prototypical perfective tense so sentence (4]) gets an interpretative
effect consistent with a perfective viewpoint 7.
(41) Juan fue justo por un dia.
‘J. was (ser) just for one day.’

There are two ways to force an aspectual reading on a predicate that is not intrinsi-
cally specified for aspect. One way is illustrated in (41) with the use of the simple past
and the adverbial modification ‘for one day’ (notice that the copula in (41) is ser). An-
other way to make a proposition express an aspectual viewpoint is by using copula ester
with adjectives that can only appear with ser in the normal circumstances. Consider
sentences (42), (43), and (44) below.

(42) ?Juan esta. cuidadoso hey.
‘J. is careful today.’

(43) ?Juan esta inteligente.
‘J. is intelligent.’

(44) ?Juan esta justo.
‘J. is just.’

Sentences (42), (43) and (44) are questionable if uttered out of the blue, but this
marginality goes away once they are used in the appropriate contexts. Imagine the

context in (45) (The translation is below).

 

7I borrow the term viewpoint from Caudal and Roussarie (forthcoming) who following Smith [1997]
argue that viewpoint expresses the speaker’s perspective on the course of events.

35

(45) Desde chiquito Juan tenia problemas en la escuela. Lo llamaban

“e1 burro” porque era notoriamente duro para razonar. Ahora
tenia la oportunidad de demostrar que podia ser inteligente. Se
dirigio al pizarrén y en tres minutes resolvio e1 dificil problema
de matematicas que el profesor habia asignado como tarea el
dia anterior. Hubo un gran silencio hasta que Lucia, una chica
timida dijo: Juan, iqué inteligente estas hoy! LMe puedes dar la
reeeta?
’Since Juan was a kid he had problems at school. He was called
“the donkey” because he was not gifted for logic. Now he had
the opportunity to show that he could be intelligent. He went
to the blackboard and in three minutes be solved the difficult
problem that the Math teacher had assigned as homework the
day before. There was a deep silence in the class until Lucia, a
shy girl said: Juan, you are (being) very intelligent today! Can
you give me the recipe?’

In terms of the usual notion of permanent IL properties and temporary SL properties
we could say that in the context (45) we are forcing an IL property such as intelligent to
be interpreted as a SL property. We are making intelligence a prototypical IL property,
be interpreted as a transitory property. I believe this is possible because adjective
intelligent is underspecified for aspect and as such it can be reinterpreted as temporally
bound.

Like the copulas, adjectives can also contribute (or not) aspectual meaning to the
predicate. Thus, adjectives that are typically < —perfective > (for Lujan) and go with
ser such as cuidadosa ‘careful’ and justo ‘just’ are not incompatible with a perfective
viewpoint precisely because they share the unmarked aspectual status of ser and do
not contribute aspectual meaning. Although sentences in (42), (43), and (44) above are
rather marked (notice that we are using ester the marked copula) they are not ruled
out. The aspectual contribution of ester overrides the unmarked aspect of the ser-type
adjectives and the sentence receives an aspectual viewpoint.

The fact that adjectives can potentially contribute some sort of aspectual mean-

ing to the predicate is supported by the ungrammaticality that arises when participial

adjectives that are specified for aspect appear with the “unmarked” copula ser:

36

(46) *Juan es enojado.
‘J. is (IL) angry.’

It seems that participial adjectives need to be temporally anchored and therefore
require the stative copula ester. As ser is essentially unmarked, the requirement is not
met and a sentence like (46) turns out to be ungrammatical. The reverse pattern, to
make ester and participial adjectives (SL adjectives) to be compatible with an imper-
fective viewpoint is not possible precisely because the adjectives are already specified
for an aspectual feature.

To sum up, the underspecified nature of ser and the typical adjectives that go with
ser makes them compatible with an aspectual viewpoint while the strong aspectual na-
ture of ester and participial adjectives makes them immune to reinterpretative aspectual

effects.

Ester takes “de” complements while a syntactic/semantic constraint disal-
lows ser to select them

As we already saw in section 2.1 there are certain syntactic environments in which copula
ester can appear but ser cannot, and vice versa. The difference in distribution seems
to suggest that ser and ester have different properties. Schmitt [1996] shows that only
ester is possible when a purpose clause is added to the Copula + adjective construction.

Schmitt assumes the analysis of Jones [1985] and Roberts [1991] that the binder of
the PRO subject of the purpose clause has to be thematic and argues that the subject
of ser is not thematic while the subject of ester is thematic.

A similar restriction applies when a “de” complement. is added to the Copula l

adjective construction. Consider the following cases:

(47) a. Maria esta/es orgullosa.
‘M. is proud.’
b. Maria esta/*es orgullosa de su padre.
‘Maria is proud of her father.’

While in (47a) both copulas are acceptable with adjective orgullosa, the copula ester

37

is the only one acceptable in (47b). If we follow Schmitt [1992]’s analysis that ser
selects for [+N] (nominal) predicates and ester selects for [+ V] (verbal) predicates, we
can account for the unacceptability of ser with “de” complements. Schmitt proposes
that [+N] and [fV] adjectives license arguments in different ways. While the arguments
of ser predicates are optional, the arguments of ester predicates are obligatory. This
difference follows from the fact that ester takes stative eventualities that are already
specified temporally while ser can only take nominal predicates that are temporally
underspecified. Assuming this analysis, we have to assume that “de” complements
impose an eventive reading on the predicate causing that only a predicate with ester be

acceptable with “de” complements.

Ester is discoursively marked while ear is not used to describe marked prop—
erties of the subject

Remember that Schmitt [1992] proposes that ser but not ester lacks internal temporal
structure. Thus ester but not ser is specified for aspect, specifically it denotes a state.
Ffom these aspectual properties it follows that ester needs to be temporally anchored
by Tense which is inherently deictic while ser may stay independent from it.

Ester asserts that a state holds at time t (t = “new”, relative to Tense). It does
not give any information about whether the state holds before or after speech time. Ser
on the other hand, asserts the content of an utterance without locating it in time. The
temporal interpretation of ser follows from the formal requirement to inflect for tense
while the interpretation of ester follows from (i) the fact that it presupposes a link to
the discourse and (ii) the formal requirement to carry inflectional tense information.

The fact that ester but not ser is discourse-dependent is illustrated with the following

sentences:

(48) a. Juana es callada y esta callada.
‘Juana is a quiet person and she is quiet right now.’
b. Juana es callada pero no esta callada.
‘Juana is a quiet person but she isn’t quiet right now.’

38

In both (48a) and (48b) the property of Juana being a quiet person (ser callada) is
temporally independent from the discourse while the state of being quiet or not (ester
callada) is required to hold at time t, that in the present tense happens to coincide with
the speech time. Therefore, (48b) asserts that Juana is being talkative at the moment of
speech without contradicting the fact that Juana is a quiet person. Also notice that the
English translation is clear with the presence of right now while the Spanish sentences

do not require the presence of any overt adverbial.

Ester is linked to the discourse while ser is not necessarily temporally lo-
catable in the discourse, unless some extra element provides the temporal
dimension

Fforn the discourse-dependent nature of ester, it follows that it may add information to

an already known situation. Ester implies a change of state. This is illustrated in (49).

(49) a. Juana es linda.
‘J. is pretty.’
b. Juana esta linda.
‘J. looks pretty now.’

Sentence (49a) asserts that Juana is a pretty woman. Provided that the information
in (49a) is already part of the common knowledge shared by speaker and hearer, sentence
(49b) means that Juana is not only a pretty woman but that she is especially pretty at
the speech time (imagine, for example, that she is wearing a beautiful dress).

Ester as opposed to ser is temporally marked. From the marked status of ester it
follows that ester may add information to an already known situation with ser. The
use of ester in (49b) implies a change in Juana’s degree of prettiness. Thus (49b) adds
information of the type “Juana is unusually pretty right now” to the already known
information that Juana is a pretty woman.

The above-mentioned properties of ser and ester will be explored experimentally in
chapter 3. Specifically, we are going to test whether Spanish-speaking children know

i) that ser and ester have different selection restrictions; namely if they know that

39

ser cannot take “de” complements while ester can; ii) that ester is used to describe
marked properties of its subject while ser is unmarked; and iii) that ester but not ser
presupposes a link to the discourse. I am also going to provide experimental pilot data
that explore children’s sensitivity to the issue that ser but not ester can be aspectually

reinterpreted.

2.3 Relevant Acquisition Questions

In this section I am going to refer to the only two studies that treat the acquisition of
the copula by Spanish and English speaking children, Sera [1992] and Becker [2001],
respectively. Since they are the only studies that focused on the acquisition issue, they
serve as our only reference. Therefore, it is important that we consider them in detail.
I initially concentrate on how Becker accounts for the pattern of copula omission that
is observed in child English. Then, I refer to Sera’s study about the acquisition of
the Spanish copula. I conclude this section by referring to some important acquisition

aspects of ser and ester that need to be addressed.

2.3.1 English

Becker [2001]’s dissertation is the first work to directly address the issue of the acqui-
sition of the copula in Standard English. Her study is based on production data taken
form the CHIIDES database (MacWhinney and Snow [1985]) of 5 English speaking chil-
dren: Nina (2;0-2;2), Peter (2;0-2;3), Naomi (2;0-2;7), Adam (2;7—3;4) and Eve (2;1-2;3).
Becker notices that children produce an overt copula in some constructions but omit it
in others. She argues that this omission pattern of the copula in English follows from
an Universal Grammar distinction that is sensitive to semantic notions of “temporari-
ness” and “permanence”. This semantic notions in turn correlate with the Stage level
(SL) and Individual Level (IL) distinction in English. Becker proposes that this seman-

tic distinction between Individual Level Predicates (ILPs) and Stage Level Predicates

40

(SLPs) is reflected in the syntax: SLPs project additional functional structure, an Event
argument and an aspectual projection AspP while ILPs do not.

Becker argues that this syntactic distinction is visible in the English children gram-
mar since children mark the ILP with an overt, inflected copula but tend to omit it in

SLPS.

(50) John is a man.
The book is on the table.
Sally is tall.

Bill is sick.

9-99”?

For example, in Nominal Predicates such as (50a) children do not omit the copula
while in locative predicates such as (50b) they do. Adjectival predicates can be IL or
SL depending on the adjective being used. Thus for example (50c) is an IL construction
because the property that applies to Sally is permanent. The predicate in (50d) is SL
because the “sickness” of Bill is temporary. Then, English-speaking children mark an
overt copula with nominals (IL) and IL adjective predicates and omit it with locatives
(SL) and SL adjective predicates (but see below).

Following Carlson [1977] and Felser [1999] Becker argues that only SLPs are allowed
as complements of perception verbs because they contain an AspP. She further elaborates
on Heycock [1995] and claims that ILPs and SLPs have different syntactic structures:
SL predicates project and AspP but IL predicates are purely lexical. She provides the
following structures:

(51) a. stage-level: [IP subjecti [I’ be [AspP [Asp’[EvP[Ev’[SC ti predicate]]]]]]
b. individual-level: [IP subjecti [I’ be [SC ti predicate]]]]

Since the copula may select either an AspP or a lexical SC, depending on whether
the predicate contains a SL or IL predicate, the omission and overtness of the copula
in English child language depends on the type of predication. The logic behind the

omission pattern is as follows: In a main clause (therefore, a finite clause) a syntactic

41

head must be bound by a Temporal operator (Top). In the adult grammar Top always
binds Inflection. If Top binds Inflection the clause is finite. If Top binds another head
the clause is non-finite and this is exactly what happens with SL predicates in the child
grammar: Top can bind either the AspP or Inflection. As IL predicates only have Infl
and no AspP the Top will always bind Infl and the clause will be finite and the copula
overt but if the predicate is SL, AspP will be bound by Top and the clause will be
non-finite. As a result children drop the copula. Thus in a sentence such as “Mary
is a doctor” Infl is bound by Top. Since there’s no verb in the structure to convey
finiteness feature, finiteness is spelled out via an inflected copula. On the other hand,
in a sentence like “John is in the garden”, both Infl and Asp are projected. Infl must be
bound by Top in the adult grammar just like the ILP, with an overt copula as a result.
Children have both options available (IL and SLP bounding of Infl by Top) but the
choice is determined by the particular structure: If there is an Asp head, it is bound by
Top (instead of Infl bound by Top). When Asp is bound by Top, Infl does not bear any
finiteness feature. If Infl need not be specified for finiteness, then it will not be finite
following an economy principle.

This analysis is consistent with the numbers when analyzing Nominal (IL) and Loca-
tive (SL) constructions. Becker shows that the average rate of overt Be is 65,8 % in
children’s Nominals and 27,770 in Locatives 8. However, the omission pattern becomes
less clear when it comes to analyze the numbers for adjectives. Because adjectival pred-
icates in English are either SLPs or ILPs depending on the adjective being use and on
the context, the same prediction should work for adjectives too. Children should omit
the copula in SLPs but mark a finite overt copula in ILPs. As the data in Table 1 Becker
[2001] shows there is more variation in the results.

Becker reports that although there is a greater tendency to find an overt copula with

 

”Becker observes that Eve has a much higher Mean Length Utterance than the other children.
Because of this and because Eve’s pattern of Be omission is very different from that of the other
children, Becker excludes Eve’s data.

42

Table 2.1: Percentage of Overt Be with SL/ IL adjectives

 

 

 

 

 

 

IL Adjectives (e.g. smart) SL Adjectives (e.g. dirty)
Nina 75,2 ‘70 49,5 %
Peter 60 ‘70 39,8 %
Naomi 93,5 % 52 ‘70
Adam 44,4 % 43,3 ‘70
Average 68,3 ‘70 46,2 ‘70

 

 

 

 

 

IL adjectives than with SL adjectives, Naomi is the only child to show a statistically
significant distinction between stage and individual level adjectives.

Becker argues that the results might be due to complicating factors in the domain of
adjectives. First, not all adjectives are easy to classify as either IL or SL adjectives ac-
cording to the standard stage level-hood tests. For example, “available”, a prototypical

SL adjective cannot appear as a complement of perception verbs:

(52) *I saw John available.

Second, Becker observes that while many SL adjectives refer to transitory properties
(sick, tired), stage-level properties are not necessarily transitory. As she acknowledges,
if children draw the SL/ IL distinction of the predicate based on the semantics, they will
have problems to distinguish between adjectival predicates.

I agree with Becker that these factors might be playing a crucial role in children’s
difficulty to distinguish between adjectival predicates but, more than an explanation for
justifying the divergent pattern on copula omission in adjectival environments, I consider
these same factors as evidence arguing against Becker’ proposal. It does not seem likely
that children are using a semantic IL/SL distinction to distinguish between types of
predicates. Remember that these same complicating factors are among the problems
with the IL/SL distinction that we contemplated in section 2.2 of this chapter. Thus I

think that the pattern of copula omission in adjectival constructions is not to be taken

43

lightly. It actually poses a problem to Becker’s analysis since it undermines her very
basic assumption that the semantic IL/SL distinction is reflected in the syntax.

It is important to observe that a major difference in the pattern of copula acquisition
between English and Spanish is that in the latter, children do not omit any copula. By
analogy to the English case Becker’s analysis would predict that Spanish and Portuguese
speaking children would go through a stage in which the SL copula ester would be
omitted. Becker observes that this is certainly not the case in Spanish but she does not
consider the absence of copula omission in Spanish as a counterexample since English
speaking children allow non-finite main clauses while Spanish speaking children do not
produce non-finite main verbs (Grinstead [1994]). The fact that in English but not in
Spanish there is omission of the copula is accounted for by relating it to the presence or
absence of Root Infinitives (RI). The RT stage is arguably absent in Spanish and Hoekstra
and Hyams [1998] suggest that in some languages but not in others, there is a RI stage,
and that the relevant property may be underspecification of number. Therefore in
English but not in Spanish underspecification of number is related to underspecification
of finiteness in functional nodes.

The differences in predicate structures that Becker claims could account for the
aspectual differences between ser and ester since we could say that ester is the lexical-
ization of AspP and that EvP is the selection requirement of AspP. However, it is not ac-
curate to assume that the structural differences follow from a IL/SL semantic/ syntactic
distinction of predicates. The observation that there is not a perfect semantic/syntactic
IL/SL mapping gets support from the different pattern of copula emission and produc-
tion by English speaking children observed in adjectival constructions. Therefore, we
can not ignore the fact that between adjectival IL and SL predicates we do not observe
a strong contrast based on whether the copula is present or absent in English child

language.

44

2.3.2 Spanish

Sera [1992] is the first (and the only work that I know of ) that reports some interesting
findings in the acquisition of the Spanish copulas based on both spontaneous and ex-
perimental data. In a first study, Sera observed the distribution of ser and ester with
nominals, adjectives and locations in two samples. One was the Spontaneous Speech
Sample in which two monolingual boys from the ages of 1;6 to 3;6 and their parents
were recorded. The other sample consisted of Elicited Production data from eleven
3-year-olds, twelve 4-year-olds, eleven 5-year-olds, twelve 9—year-olds and five adults.

Sera reports that the overall pattern of distribution of the two copulas is similar in
both children and adults: only forms of ser with nominals, only forms of ester with
locations, and both forms with adjectives (55% forms of ester for the adults vs. 58% for
the children). This result indicates that children as young as 3—years-old are producing
the copulas correctly at least in natural data. Sera also reports that Spanish speaking
children used ester more than ser in the Elicited Production Sample but not in the
Spontaneous Speech sample. Sera reports that this tendency is attenuated with age:
3 year-olds used ester 88% of the time while 9 year-olds used it 76 % of the time.
Adults used ester 63 % of the time. Sera interprets these findings as evidence that on
distributional grounds Spanish speakers use ser and ester contrastively from very early
on 9.

In another study (study 4 for Sera), Sera examines the semantic contrast between
ser and ester in two conditions, one with adjectives and one with locations. Fifty-two
children participated in this study. They formed 4 age groups with means of 4;5, 5;10,
7;11 and 10;1. I will refer to the use of the copula in locative constructions first. In

the locative condition, children asked a puppet for the location of either an object or

 

9However, Sera shows in a graph (p. 414) that around 10% of 3-year-olds use ester with nouns in the
Elicited Production Sample but she does not report it. This observation is important since it suggests
that by age 3, children are still having problems with the ser and ester distinction. This pattern also
indicates that the non-adult use of ester by children is not visible in spontaneous production but only
when production is elicited, not surprisingly.

45

an event. As we already saw in section 2.1 above, in Spanish, ester is used with objects

and ser is used with events. Consider the following sentences:

(53) a. La fiesta es en casa de Maria.
‘The party is in Mary’s house.’
b. La pelota esté. en casa de Maria.
‘The ball is in Mary’s house.’

Sera reports that children of all ages performed nearly perfectly when asking about
the location of objects (above 90% correct) but that they performed on the range of
15 to 28 % correct when asking about the location of events. In other words, children
used ester with objects more than 90% of the time but fail to use ser to locate events
more than 70% of the time. This means that in her experiment, children as old as 11
years of age did not show to have mastered the distinction between objects and events
in locative constructions and therefore used ester more than ser to locate both events
and objects.

Based on this result, and because the distinction between objects and events cannot
be other than semantic, Sera hypothesizes that children might have a poorer semantic
basis than adults have. She also observes that it is possible that children might be
relying in the presence of the preposition of the locative predicate in order to determine
that ester but not ser must be used; and that is the reason why they did not make
mistakes in the use of ser with nominals and ester with locatives in study 1.

Such results are important since they indicate that Spanish-speaking children may
be using syntactic rather than semantic information in order to differentiate copula use.
As the classification of the sentential subject must be semantic and they are making
mistakes here, they do not seem to be using semantic information.

In the other condition of the same study, Sera investigated the acquisition of ser and
ester with adjectives. This condition elicited forms of ser and ester by having children
describe objects to a puppet. Children were presented with items that had previously

elicited responses of ser or ester by adults that were the control group. Four of the

46

pairs of objects differed by attributes that were described with ser by adults, and four
differed by attributes that were described with ester. It is important to remark that
Sera defines as “correct” copula the one that adults consistently selected to appear with
certain adjectives. In other words, if adults consistently used ser with adjective grands
‘big’, ser was considered the right copula to appear with this adjective and therefore
the use of ester was considered incorrect.

Table (2.2) shows the eight attributes that elicited forms of ser and ester and the
percentage of correct copula use by adjective group by 3 to 4 year olds (I only consider
this age group since Sera reports that from the age of 4, children select the correct
copula (either ser or ester more than 80% of the time)):

Table 2.2: Adjectives that elicited ser and ester by 3 to 4 year-olds in Sera’s study
number 4 and Percentage correct

 

 

 

 

 

Ser Estar

Largo ‘long’ Limpio ‘clean’
Corto ‘short’ Sucio ‘dirty’
Grande ‘big’ Mojado ‘wet’
Pequefio ‘little’ Seco ‘dry’

 

Redondo ‘round’ Contento ‘happy’
Cuadrado ‘square’ Triste ‘sad’

 

 

 

 

Verde ‘green’ Roto ‘broken’
Amarillo ‘yellow’ Enfermo ‘sick’
78% 62%

 

 

 

 

Table (2.2) shows that young children use ser with adjectives that typically appear
with ser 78% of the time and use ester with adjectives that typically appear with ester
62% of the time. Sera observes that children use the “right” copula more than the 70%
of the time (she calculates the mean of both percentages of table (2.2)), and concludes
that children, like adults, explicitly classify adjectives as holding either a ser (hence
‘permanent”) or an ester (hence “temporary”) status. Thus, for example, children, as
well as adults, would use ser to describe an object that was vende ‘green’ and corto ‘short’

because ser is the copula that denotes “permanent” properties but would use aster to

47

describe an object that was sucio ‘dirty’ and mojado ‘wet’ because these properties are
“temporary”. It is important to notice that Sera assumes the semantic notion that ser
is used for “permanent” attributes and ester for “temporary” attributes. As we saw in
sections 2.1 and 2.2, this cannot be a valid generalization to account for copula choice
in Spanish.

Although Sera’s findings in this study are extremely interesting, I am forced to
disregard them as conclusive. The fact that young Spanish-speaking children make
mistakes in adjectival constructions (they fail to use ser with ser-type adjectives 28%
of the time and fail to use ester with ester —type adjectives 38% of the time) is a crucial
finding for the study of child language acquisition. However, there is a problem with
the experiment that does not allow us to conclude whether children are in fact using
the “wrong” copula with certain adjectives.

The problem lies in that Sera did not choose adjectives that can only take either
ser or ester. Notice that all the adjectives in the ser column in Table 2.2 above are
adjectives that can also take copula ester and be perfectly well formed predicates. Thus,
the 28% of incorrect copula use in the ser column given by Sera only shows that children
allow some adjectives that typically appear with ser to appear also with ester. As there
is nothing in the grammar disallowing this type of adjectives to also appear with ester, it
is not adequate to consider their occurrences with ester as instances of incorrect copular
use.

The same problem is seen with the adjectives that appear in the ester column of
Table 2.2. According to Sera’s criterion, the occurrences of these adjectives with copula
ser would be incorrect. However, notice that adjectives limpio ‘clean’, sucie ‘dirty’ and
seco ‘dry’ are all grammatical with ser too (all the others are ungrammatical with ser).
Since Sera does not report which adjectives that require to appear with ester (and are
ungrammatical with ser) were the ones used with ser by the children, we cannot safely

conclude that children produced sequences like es contento ‘is happy’ or es rate that

48

are ungrammatical. We simply do not know if children are making mistakes because we
do not specifically know which adjectives children used incorrectly with ser. It is still
a possibility that children may have used ser with the three adjectives that are correct
with both ester and ser.

The results of Sera’s study on ser and ester with adjectives can be interpreted as
indicating that young Spanish-speaking children show an adult-like preference for either
ser or ester in certain adjective constructions; but they certainly do not provide support
for arguing that children make copular errors in adjective predicates.

In summary, from Sera’s acquisition study of ser and ester we know that (i) Spanish-
speaking children as young as 3 years old, use ser in nominal and ester in locative
constructions just as adults do, and (ii) children as old as 11 years of age, incorrectly
use copula ester to locate events. These two findings together suggest that children do
not use semantic clues (they do not notice the difference between objects and events)
but use syntactic clues in order to distinguish between types of predicates based on
the presence or absence of a prepositional element. A last finding seems to suggest that
children, as adults, classify adjectives as either holding a ser or an ester status. However,
we should be cautious and add that the classification of adjectives as taking one or the

other copula should be seen as indicating preference and not linguistic knowledge.

2.3.3 Remaining acquisition questions about ser and ester

The very first and also the most general question that we must ask is whether Spanish-
speaking children distinguish between the different meanings of ser and ester. Because
of corpus and production data we know that they use them in different syntactic context
and that they do not make many errors in their distribution. The question now is, do
Spanish-speaking children comprehend the copula? More specifically, do they know
that ser and ester have different meanings even when they are both used in the same
syntactic environment, namely in adjectival constructions?

Another very important question in the acquisition of ser and ester is whether

49

Spanish-speaking children learn the different meanings of the copulas in an ordered way.
As Sera (1992) claims that Spanish-speaking children overuse ester, it is reasonable to
expect that children acquire ester earlier than ser. According to the the Semantic Subset
Principle Principle (Grain and Thornton [1998], Crajn [1992], Crain et al [1994], Crain
and Philip [1993]), children acquiring language initially select the representation that
is true in the smallest set of circumstances. Remember that ester entails ser in certain
circumstances. Thus, as ester is a subset of ser whatever is true for ester must be also
true for ser but not vice versa. From this subset relation it follows that ester+ adjective
is true in the smallest set of circumstances. Consider examples in (54) in a context in

which both (a) and (b) are true:

(54) a. Sara es linda.
‘Sara is pretty.’
b. Sara esta linda.
‘Sara looks pretty.’

The circumstance in which Sara looks pretty is temporally bound (to the ‘now’
index) while the circumstance in which Sara is pretty is not linked to the discourse.
Therefore, it follows that the set of circumstances in which ser is involved are bigger
than the set of circumstances in which ester is involved. Also, notice that the facts
that the temporal anchoring properties of ester and that ester cannot be interpreted
non-monotonically (as ser can) make a statement with ester be more falsifiable than a
statement containing ser.

Although in Sera’s study children seem to overuse ester they also use ser correctly
with nominal predicates. Therefore we do not have any indication of whether they have
acquired ester before ser. Hence one of our main experimental questions is concerned
with whether Spanish-speaking children do acquire one copula before the other.

Our third question is related to the kinds of information, whether syntactic, lexical,
semantic or pragmatic, that children might use in order to distinguish between ser and

ester. As Sera points out, it is possible that children use syntactic information in order

50

to differentiate predicates and consequently use information about predicate categories
in order to select ser or ester. As it is difficult to conclude with certainty if that is
the case based on Sera’s results, we are in need of experiments that carefully control
syntactic, semantic and pragmatic variables in order to determine the types of clues
that children exploit while acquiring ser and ester.

Another important issue to investigate is whether we observe developmental stages
in the acquisition of the Spanish Copulas. Remember that in Sera’s study some 3 year-
old children (10% of the 3 year-old group) made mistakes in nominal constructions by
using ester instead of ser. In the next chapter, I will attempt to provide answers to the

above questions.

2.3.4 Conclusions of Chapter 2

This chapter had two main goals: first it outlined the most influential theoretical ac-
counts on copula opposition in Spanish and showed the need to consider a more complete
analysis to account satisfactorily for the distribution of ser and ester. Secondly, it pro-
vided a review of two important studies in the acquisition of the copula in English and
Spanish child language.

We saw that only a semantic/aspectual analysis that incorporates discourse consid-
erations is capable of accounting for the different distribution and interpretation of ser
and ester. The analysis given in section 2.2.4 proposed to derive the behavior of ser and
ester from their aspectual and anchoring properties without having to recur to prob-
lematic accounts. In doing so we got rid of explanations based on metaphysical notions
like “temporary” vs “permanent”, “ accidental” vs. “inherent”, etc. that do not have
any predictive power. After showing its inadequacy, we also got rid of the syntactic and
semantic accounts of ser and ester based on the IL/SL distinction.

In the last section of chapter 2, we saw that Becker’s interpretation that English-
speaking children mark the IL/SL distinction syntactically is not really warranted. This

observation is based on the observation that no strong correlation was observed between

51

adjectival IL and SL predicates and the absence or presence of the copula.

Finally, we saw that Spanish-speaking children still show some problems in the pro-
duction of the copulas in certain environments (with locatives and nominals). We also
saw that we basically know nothing about the use and comprehension of ser and ester
in adjective constructions. We concluded with a brief discussion on remaining questions
related to the acquisition of ser and ester. In the next chapter, I address these and
other questions. I will provide evidence that Spanish-speaking children have mastered
some semantic and aspectual properties of ser and ester but still have problems when

copula use depends on contextual information.

52

Chapter 3

Experiments in the acquisition of
the Spanish copula in adjectival
predicates

3.1 Introduction

In chapter 2 we saw that any analysis of ser and ester requires both a complete de-
scription and a good explanation of their distribution facts. I argued against the se-
mantic/syntactic accounts that take into consideration metaphysical notions like “per-
manency” and “temporariness” and we showed that a distinction in terms of ILPs and
SLPs is inadequate to characterize the Spanish copulas. I also claimed that an analysis
based on the aspectual properties of ser and ester is more appropriate but not enough
because we also have to explain their uses in the discourse. As I proposed that an ex-
haustive account of the copulas needs to consider the discourse factors that affect their
use, I reviewed a semantic / pragmatic acccount of ser and ester. Since this analysis lacks
a principled account of the copulas, I informally made a proposal to derive the discourse
behavior of ser and ester from their aspectual properties. In doing so I focussed on
different properties of ser and ester that I characterize as follows: (1) ester but not ser
is necessarily linked to the discourse, ( 2) ester is temporally marked and therefore it
is used for marked properties of the subject while ser is used for describing unmarked

properties, (3) ester forces monotonic inferencing while ser allows nonmonotonic infer-

53

encing, (4) since ester but not ser is specified for aspect, ser but not ester is subject to
reinterpretative aspectual effects, and (5) ester but not ser takes “de”- complements.
In this chapter I report on two experiments that tested Spanish-speaking children’s
comprehension of these properties. The first experiment is a Picture Selection Task
(PST) that tests whether children know that ester is discoursively marked. The second
experiment is an Acceptability Task (AT) that specifically tests children’s knowledge of

syntactic, semantic and discourse properties of ser and ester.

3.2 The Picture Selection Task: comprehension of
ester

3.2.1 Goal of the experiment and predictions

The goal of the experiment was two-fold. First, we wanted to test the prediction that
Spanish speaking children associate the copula ester with marked characteristics of the
subject in adjectival predicative constructions just as adults do. In other words, we
want to examine if children associate ester with a temporally bound property. Our
prediction is motivated by the Semantic Subset Principle (Grain and Thornton [1998],
Crain [1992], Crain et el [1994], Grain and Philip [1993]) which argues that children
acquiring language first choose the representation that is true in the smallest set of
circumstances. As ester can be a subset of ser, it is reasonable to expect that children
will master ester first since it is easier to falsify because it must be temporally anchored.
Let us consider what the possible outcomes are. On the one hand, if children perform like
adults, and consistently select the picture that is more appropriate to match a marked
interpretation of the predicate, we would be in the position to argue that they in fact
know that ester is temporally bound. If on the other hand, children do not know this
property of ester, we would expect two outcomes: either children select any picture at
random (therefore, showing no preference for the specific ester representation) or they

choose the “unmarked” picture (consistenet with the ser interpretation) more than the

54

“marked” one.

Our hypothesis regarding children’s knowledge of ester is that children know that
ester is linked to the discourse and therefore know that ester is used for depicting
marked properties. The alternative hypothesis is that children have not acquired the
property of ester being temporally bound and then linked to the discourse yet.

Regarding development, our hypothesis is that the performance of children in dif-
ferent age groups should not differ. The alternative hypothesis is that older children
should perform better than younger children.

Our secondary objective was to see if children use typicality cues. It is possible that
they know that certain adjectives are more typically used with ser than with ester. In
order to control for these typicality effects we used experimental sentences that only
contained ester with adjectives that typically appear with ser. The adjectives used in
the task were selected based on a norming study in which 19 Spanish native speakers
had to fill in the blanks of adjective predicates with either ser or ester (See appendix
A for items and percentages of the norming study). We selected the adjectives that
were used in our experiment based on two criteria: their meaning needed to be easily
represented by pictures and they had to occur in the norming study with ser more than
70% of the time. Table 3.1 contains information of the adjectives used in the PST. The

p-values (in parentheses) are for choosing ser significantly above chance.

Table 3.1: Percentages of ser use per adjective in the Norming study

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adjective Percentage with ser
Linda ‘pretty’ 94.73% (.00)
Alta ‘tall’ 100% (.00)
Bajita ‘short’ 100% (.00)
Rubia ‘blonde’ 100% (.00)
Rayada ‘stripped’ 94.73% (.00)
Rojo ‘red’ 73.6% (.02)

 

We have the following hypothesis regarding children’s use of typicality clues:

55

Children do not use typicality information. The alternative hypothesis is that chil-
dren do use typicality information.

If children show an adult-like performance by consistently choosing the more appro-
priate picture for the input with ester + adjective, we will have confirmation that they
are not using typicality in order to make their decision in the task. If children select the
unmarked picture more than the marked one, this result would be consistent with the
idea that children are indeed using tipicality cues. As our experimental sentences only
include adjectives that typically occur with copula ser in the company of ester, it was
certainly a possibility that children would not like the occurrence of ester with this type
of adjectives. If children select any picture at random and we do not observe a pref—
erence in any direction, we would have no indication that children are using typicality
information to determine which copula occurs with which adjective at all.

Going back to our main goal of testing whether children know that ester is discur—
sively more marked than ser, if children behave as adults we will be able to say that
they know that ester may add information to a previously known state. As we already
pointed out in chapter 2, ester entails ser in a context in which both ser and ester are

True. The sentences in (1) illustrate this point.

(I) a. La jirafa es alta.
b. La jirafa esta. alta.
‘The giraffe is tall.’

A possible context in which both sentences in (1) are true could is one in which
a giraffe that is intrinsically a tall animal gets on top of a table and becomes even
taller. Then, a picture depicting the giraffe on the ground is consistent with the ser
interpretation while a picture depicting the giraffe on top of a table is consistent with
the ester interpretation.

However, as we stated in chapter 2, the relationship of ester entailing ser (Lujan

[1981]) is not an absolute generalization. Therefore, (2b) does not necessarily entail

56

(2a). Notice that it. is possible to continue (2a)(below) with (3).

(2) a. Juana es linda.
b. Juana esta linda.
‘J. is pretty.’

(3) ...pero hoy se levanté enferma y no esta linda.
‘...but today she woke up sick and does not look pretty.’

In this experiment, we only considered contexts in which both constructions (ser +Adj)
and (ester 4 Adj) were true. This was done with the purpose of making sure that we
were really testing the semantic difference between ser and ester. Although we did
not directly test knowledge of copula ser, one of the pictures in the experiment was
always consistent with a ser interpretation while the other was consistent with an ester
interpretation. Therefore, by examining the children’s pattern response we gain infor-
mation about their knowledge of both copulas. The logic is that if children select the
more appropriate picture consistently above chance, we have an indication that they
are discriminating between the distinct uses of ser and ester. By using ester in the
experimental sentence children would have to consistently select the context(set by the
picture) in which the property described by the adjective was the more marked one (in
the case of sentence (1) above, the marked picture would correspond to the picture of
the giraffe on top of a table). If children failed to do this they still would not be making
a mistake since ester entails ser and both contexts (set by the two pictures) are true,
the unmarked context would still be a possible context for the sentence. Of course, if
children fail to select the appropriate context for ester and select the unmarked context
more than the marked one or just at random, we would not be able to say that they

know that in these cases ser and ester sentences have the same truth values.

3.2.2 Subjects

The experiment was carried out with 30 Cuban-Spanish speaking children, ranging

from 3;3 to 7;3 years old (mean age 5;0) and 18 Chilean-Spanish speaking children,

57

ranging from 4 to 5;10 years old (mean age 4;10). Data fiom only one Cuban child
was excluded from analysis on the basis of his failure to master the task. This child
would point to one picture before listening to the experimental sentence. The adult
control group for the Cuban group included 25 subjects. The control group for the
Chilean experiment included 9 Chilean Spanish-speaking subjects that were students at
MSU. The Cuban children were recruited from different kindergartens located in the city
of Playa in Havana, Cuba. The Chilean children were drawn from two kindergartens

located in the city of Punta Arenas in Chile 1.

3.2.3 Experimental Methodology

The experimental design that we used was a Picture Selection Task. Each different
trial consisted of two pictures (see Appendix B.3 for some examples of the experimental
pictures), a description of the pictures (to draw equal attention to both pictures) and
a question (the experimental input). The experimental input always asked a question
with copula ester but the pictures were different in that one of them depicted a specific
unmarked characteristic or property (e.g. a tall giraffe on the ground) consistent with
the ser interpretation while the other picture depicted the same characteristic enhanced
by a particular situation (e.g. a tall giraffe on top of a table), consistent with an ester

interpretation.
Procedure

Both pictures were presented to the child at the same time and the experimenter made
sure the child looked at both pictures before presenting them with the experimental
sentence. The child’s task was to look at both pictures and select (by pointing) the one
that best answered the experimental question. As the objective of the task was to test
the comprehension of ester, all the experimental sentences asked for a specific property

with ester.

 

’Research Involving Human Subjects of Michigan State University approved the investigation on
February 26, 2002 with the IRB # 02-049.

58

The experimenter took notes of the picture the child pointed to immediately after
the child had made the choice.

There were few cases in which both adults and children pointed to both pictures
(notice that both pictures are correct since ester entails ser). When this happened we
told the subjects that they could only select one picture and repeated the experimental
sentence. There was only one case in which a Cuban child selected both pictures even
after we told her to select only one. We did not consider her response for that particular
trial.

The adults were tested following exactly the same procedure as the one used with
children.

The experiment was presented to the children individually by one experimenter. The
Chilean children were tested in a quiet area of the school that they were attending to in
the Punta Arenas region during the month of July (2002) while the Cuban children were
tested in a quiet room at their homes in Havana City in the first two weeks of March
(2002). The designed was a 2X2. The materials were presented in a session of 5 to 10
minutes. Because of the straightforwardness and simplicity of the task, children only
needed one trial as practice. The experimenters were two linguistics graduate students

of MSU.
Materials

The materials consisted of a total of 24 color pictures for the Cuban group and 26 color
pictures for the Chilean group.

The pictures were presented to all subjects (children and adults) in the same order.
Both pictures depicted the same subject but in different situations (see Appendix B.3).
For example, a pair of pictures depicted a giraffe. In one of the pictures the giraffe was
standing on the ground and in the other the giraffe was on a table. Once the child
looked at both pictures the experimenter asked qual jirafa esta alta? ‘Which giraffe

is (SL) tall’? The expected adult response would be to point to the picture in which

59

the giraffe is on the table. As both giraffes are exactly the same size it does not make
sense to ask which giraffe is ser tall (IL). Thus, although it is true that both giraffes ser
’are-IL’ tell, it is not strictly true that both giraffes esten ’are-SL’ tall in both pictures.
If children know that ester is marked, they should select the picture in which the giraffe
is on the table because this is the picture that adds more information to the already
known state of giraffes being tall animals.

We tested the comprehension of ester in two dialectal groups: Cuban and Chilean
Spanish. We did not test exactly the same items in both Spanish dialects because after
running the Cuban experiment we designed the Chilean experiment with two objectives:
We wanted to see if the findings for some adjectives used with the Cuban subjects could
be replicated and second, we wanted to include two more different adjectives. Because
of this, we will refer to each design separately.

The Picture Selection Task with Cuban Spanish speaking subjects contained the
following experimental adjectives: linda ‘pretty’, elta ‘tall’, bajita ‘small’, rubia ‘blonde’,
and 8 fillers that asked about the location of an object (the pictures from the fillers were
the ones used by Beretta and Munn [1998]). An example of the fillers is given in (4).

(4) 5015.1 barco esta sobre una maleta?
‘Which ship is on a suitcase?’

One of the pictures had a ship above a suitcase and the other had the suitcase above
the ship. The child was presented with a total number of 4 trials and 8 fillers and the
duration of the task was of approximately 5 minutes. The Picture Selection Task in
Chilean Spanish contained the following experimental adjectives: rayade ‘listed’, elta
‘tall’, bejite ‘small’, rojo ‘red’, rubie ‘blonde’, and 8 fillers that asked about the location
of an object similar to the Cuban case but were not identical (see appendix B for a
complete list of items of the PST). The child was presented with a total number of 5
trials and 8 fillers. As in the Cuban experiment, the task had a duration of approximately

5 minutes.

60

3.2.4 Results

We proceed to examine the results obtained in the Picture Selection Task. In this task
we test whether the probability of answering correctly (selecting the picture that better
matches the experimental sentence) is higher than .5 (more than 50 % of the time) or
what would result if the subjects answered the question at random. The results of the
binomial tests show probabilities of answering correctly significantly above .5 for all the
items except for the item that tested comprehension of ester + rubia (blonde).

Tables 3.2 and 3.3 summarize the percentages of correct response per adjective in
both adult and children in the Cuban and Chilean group respectively. The p-values that
are given in parentheses are calculated in order to Show if the percentage per adjective

is significantly above chance. See Appendix B.2 for the scores per subject.

Table 3.2: Percentages per adjective in the Cuban group (and p-values for comparison
to see if they were above chance)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adults (n=25) Children (n=30)
linda 72% (.00) 83.3% (.00) n: 29)
alta 88% (.00) 93.3% (.0 0)
bajita 100% (.00) 93.3% (.0 0)
rubia 52% (.5) 36.6% (.9 )
Note: One child pointedl to both pictures for the trial with adjective linda

Table 3.3: Percentages per adjective in the Chilean group (and p-values for comparison
to see if they were above chance)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adults (n- 9) Children (nrl8)
rayada 88.8% (.02) 83.3% (.00)
alta 100% (.00) 88.8% (.00)
bajita 100% (.00) 83.3% (.00)
rubia 88.8% (.20 ) 11.11% (.99)
rojo 100% (.00) 88.8% (.00)

 

 

 

These results indicate that children show an adult-like performance in every exper-

imental trial except in the one with adjective rubia ‘blonde’ (since the Cuban adults

61

show a behavior of change with this particular item and children deviate in this pic-
ture from their behavior with other pictures, we decided to eliminate this item from
further discussion although we will address later why we think this item posed so many
problems).

We also divided the children in two age groups. The Cuban youngest group included
children aged 3;3 to 4;7 and the oldest group included children aged 5;2 to 7;3. The
Chilean youngest group included children aged 4;1 to 4;11 and the oldest group included

children aged 5;2 to 5:11. Tables 3.4 and 3.5 summarize this information.

Table 3.4: Percentage correct of Cuban children per age group

 

 

 

 

Age Group esta linda esta alta esta bajita
3;3-4;7 (n-—12) 83.3% 83.3% 83.3%
5;2-7;3 (nr18) 88.23% 100% 100%

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3.5: Percentage correct of Chilean children per age group

 

 

 

 

Age Group esta rayada esta alta esta bajita estarojo
4;1-4;11 (n——l2) 75% 83.3% 75% 83.3%
5;2-5;ll(n-6) 100% 100% 100% 100%

 

 

 

 

 

 

A t-test for differences in means shows that the difference in performance between the
young and older children is statistically significant (127.018 for the Cuban and p=.007
for the Chilean group).

3.2.5 Discussion

The first important finding of the Picture Selection Task is that both children and adults
show an understanding of the copula ester (except with one adjective) in adjectival
predicates in the sense that, they are across the board above chance. Remember that
we had the hypothesis that children know that ester is linked to the discourse and

therefore they know that ester is used for depicting marked properties. The alternative

62

hypothesis was that children have not acquired the property of ester being temporally
bound yet.

The results confirm the hypothesis that children know that esteris discourse depen-
dent. The fact that children consistently selected the marked picture over the unmarked
one suggests that they seem to know that ester relates to a specific situation.

Our developmental hypothesis stated that the performance of children in different
age groups should not differ and the alternative hypothesis was that older children
should perform better than younger children. The results confirm the developmental
hypothesis that older children performed better than younger children. This is to say
that older children selected the correct (marked) picture more consistently than the
younger children.

The second main finding is that children do not show any sign of using typicality
cues of the adjective. The children in our experiment showed that they were happy in
assigning a marked interpretation to a typically non-temporal adjective. Therefore we
confirm the hypothesis that children do not use typicality cues.

In this section, we also need to address the failure of both groups, adults and children
in the Cuban experiment to select the more marked picture with the adjective rubia
(blonde). I really do not have a good explanation for this behavior. The same is
observed with Chilean children but not with Chilean adults, who selected the right
picture 88.8% of the time. For this adjective, one of our pictures depicted a mulata
with blonde hair and the other depicted a real standard blond (with blue eyes and
white skin). Notice that in both dialectal groups children failed to select the marked
picture more than the other above chance. Cuban children obtained 36.6% and Chilean
children 11.11% correct. I believe that perhaps children never see the possibility of a
mulata being blonde. Perhaps skin color is the relevant measure for blondness.

Since subjects’ performance in the experimental sentence that had adjective rubia

seems to be affected by extralinguistic factors, we do not consider it in our results. Once

63

we eliminate the rubia case, our results show that both children and adults chose the
marked picture for ester above chance in all adjectives. However, we still see variation
in the percentages between the two dialectal groups Cuban and Chilean Spanish, and
between adults and children of the same dialectal group. This is illustrated in Tables
3.6 and 3.7.

Table 3.6: Percentages correct in three age groups for Cuban subjects in the PST

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Groups esta linda esta alta esta bajita
3;3-4;7 (n=12) 83.3% 83.3% 83.3%
5;2-7;3 (n=18) 88.23% 100% 100%
Adults (n: 23) 72% 88% 100%

 

 

Table 3.7: Percentages correct in three age groups for Chilean subjects in the PST

 

 

 

 

Groups esta. rayada esta alta esta’. bajita esta rojo
4;1-4;11(n-—-12) 75% 83.3% 75% 83.3%
5;2-5;11 (n-r—6) 100% 100% 100% 100%
Adults (nr9) 88.88% 100% 100% 100%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Chilean group all the percentages obtained by the children (as one whole
group) were either equal or lower than the percentage of adults per adjective. However,
the variation between children and adults in the Cuban group is more difficult to inter-
pret. In this last group children got higher percentages than adults in two adjectives
elta and linda. I believe this difference between the Chilean and Cuban adults may
have two sources: variability in non-standard language and/or task expectations. The
Chilean adult subjects were all graduate students and many of them provided logical
explanations for their choice of picture by saying, for example, “this one because the
other one “es (ser) + adjective”. On the other hand, approximately half of the Cuban
adults had been out of school for a long time and did not pay attention in the same

way as the ones who had further educational experiences. Also there were few cases in

64

which Cuban subjects interpreted the experimental question as requesting a comparison.
Some of them explained their picture choice by saying that they preferred one picture
over the other. For example, for the experimental question “LCual sirenita esta linda?”
‘Which Little Mermaid is pretty?’, one adult chose the less marked picture and added
that in that picture the mermaid looked better because she was not wearing a lot of
make-up. In general, the Chilean adults did not show any sign of preference for any pic-
ture based on extralinguistic factors. Therefore I suggest that the variability observed
in the percentages obtained by Cuban and Chilean adults in the PST is related to their

expectations of the task.

3.3 The Acceptability Task

3.3.1 Goal of the experiment

The main goal of the acceptability task was to test whether Spanish-speaking children
distinguish between ser and ester in specific contexts. We tested knowledge of ser and
ester in 3 different conditions. We also included two conditions as a pilot study: condi-
tion 4 tested if Spanish speaking children distinguish between the so-called IL and SL
adjectival predicates in absolute clauses, and condition 5 tested for semantic/aspectual
compatibility of adjectival conjuncts with both copulas. Since all the conditions tested

different types of linguistic knowledge, I proceed to refer to each condition separately.
Condition 1 Polysemic “Free”

The main goal of this condition was to test whether children know that the use of
different copulas correlate with the different meanings of a specific adjective. Therefore
the polysemic condition involved adjectives that have different lexical meanings in which
each reading selects for a different copula. Thus, for example, adjective listo has two

different readings. In (5a) listo means ‘ready’ while in (5b) it means ‘smart’.

65

(5) a. Juan esta listo (para ir a la escuela).
John is ready(to go to school).
b. Juan hizo las tareas rapidamente porque es muy listo.
‘John made his homework quickly because he is very smart.’

In this condition the meaning of the adjective determines the choice of the copula
that is assigned to the predicate. We created two contexts that biased one interpretation
of the adjective or the other. For example, we created one context that only allowed the
ready meaning of listo so that the correct copula in this case was ester and a second
context in which the only possible interpretation of listo was smart given the context
and therefore the correct copula was ser. Then children had to listen to a little story
and decide if the copula used by a puppet was the correct one or not according to the
specific context set by the story.

In condition 1, the relevant factor that affects the use of ester is conformed by the
lexical / semantic properties of the predicate matching a small story. Therefore we predict

that if children perform adult-like they must have mastered these properties.
Condition 2 “De” Complement

The main goal of condition 2 was to test whether children know that ester but not ser
takes adjectives with “de” (of) complements.

This condition explores a semantic/syntactic restriction in the use of the copula.
When an adjective takes a “de” (of) complement, the only grammatical option is to use

copula ester. Therefore (6a) is grammatical but (6b) is ungrammatical.

(6) a. Maria esta orgullosa de sus hijos.
‘Mary is (estar) proud of her sons.’

b. * Maria es orgullosa de sus hijos.

‘Mary is (ser) proud of her sons.’

Thus in sentence (7) below with ser cannot mean that Mary is proud (of someone or

something). Rather, it means that Mary has a lot of pride or even that she is arrogant.

66

(7) Maria es orgullosa.
‘Mary is a proud/arrogant woman.’

In order to convey this last meaning the copula ester must be used instead. This
is the only interpretation available for adjective orgullosa when a “de” complement is
used as in sentence (6a). In condition 2, children could rely on syntactic information
in order to verify whether the choice of the copula is or not acceptable independent of
the story and/or the exact meaning of the adjective. Alternatively, they could rely on
the lexical meaning of the adjective to make the choice in the copula. In other words,
there are two sources of information in this condition, lexical/semantics and syntax of

the complements.
Condition 3 Context Only

The main goal of this condition is to test whether Spanish speaking children know that
ester is used with contingent properties (linked to the discourse) while ser is used with
more permanent or inherent properties (not linked to the discourse).

This condition is very similar to condition 1 (polysemic “free”) except that here the

adjectives do not have different lexical meanings. Consider the following sentences:

(8) a. Maria es callada.
‘M. is a quiet person.’
b. Maria esta callada.
‘M. is being quiet right now.’

In (8a) copula ser is used to express that the property of being quiet is not bound to
the discourse and therefore it qualifies as an “inherent” property of Mary. The copula
ester is used in (8b) instead because it describes the circumstantial property that Mary
is acting quiet at the speech time.

In order to show adult-like knowledge in this condition, children would have to rely
entirely on contextual information, unlike in condition 1 where lexical meaning can be

also used and condition 2 where syntactic and possibly lexical meaning can be used.

67

Condition 4 With Absolute clauses

The main objective of this condition is to test whether Spanish-speaking children draw
a distinction between the so called IL/SL adjectival predicates.
Absolute clauses are a test for determining if a predicate is SL or IL since they require
a SL predicate. With absolutes are small clauses preceded of with. An example is given
in (9). In (9a) as the adjective broken describes temporal properties (remember that
“temporariness” is associated to stage level predicates), the sentence is grammatical.
This is not the case of (9b) since intelligent typically describes permanent properties of
Mary.
(9) a. With the television broken, Mary can’t watch cartoons.
b. * With Mary intelligent, we will win the Math contest.
This distinction also applies in Spanish. The sentences (10a,b) are the Spanish
counterparts of (9a,b), respectively.
(10) a. Con el televisor roto, Maria no puede ver los mufiequitos.
b. *Con Maria inteligente, ganaremos e1 concurso de matematicas.
In order to show adult-like performance in this condition, children need to master

the lexical properties of the adjectives used.
Condition 5. Conjunction

To coordinate two conjuncts CC requires that they be of the same semantic type. How-
ever, we have to be careful with this generalization. Notice that sentences (11a,b) are

grammatical.

68

(11) a. Juana esta’. linda y cansada.
‘J. is (estar) pretty and tired.’
b. Juana esta cansada y linda.
‘J. is (estar) tired and pretty.’
c. *Juana es linda y cansada.
‘J. is (ser) pretty and tired.’
(I. *Juana es cansada y linda.
‘J. is (ser) tired and pretty.’

As sentences (11a,b) show, it is possible to conjoin adjectives that typically occur
with ser with adjectives that typically occur with ester as long as the copula is ester.
This follows from the fact that coercion of an IL property into a SL property but not
the opposite is allowed by the grammar. When the SL copula ester is used, the typical
ser type property linda in (11a) and (11b) automatically receives a SL interpretation.
Remember from chapter 2 that aspectually underspecified adjectives can receive a SL
reading even though they are typically interpreted as non—stage-level. Thus no problem
arises because both adjectives cansada and linda receive a SL interpretation consistent
with the use of ester and there is no semantic clash. The problem with (11c) and (11d)
lies in that (i) the copula ser is incompatible with aspectually specified adjectives and
(ii) it is impossible to coerce a SL property into an IL property. Therefore, adjective
cansada cannot receive an interpretation consistent with ser and the last two sentences
of (11) are ruled out on the grounds of aspectual/semantic incompatibility.

The main goal of this condition was to test whether Spanish-speaking children obey
the constraint against using copula ser when conjoining adjectives with different aspec-
tual properties.

We have the following three predictions for our main conditions:

1. Children will perform better in the experimental sentences that contained ester.

2. Children will make more errors in condition 3 since copula choice is only deter-
mined by context alone.

3. Children will perform better in condition 2 since copula choice is determined by

syntactic factors.

69

The null hypothesis is that there will be no difference across conditions if children
know everything or if they do not know anything about the copulas.

Our first prediction is again motivated by the Semantic Subset Principle. This
principle is responsible for ordering possible interpretations by instructing children to
choose first the representation that is true in the smallest set of circumstances.

Again, as ester can entail ser, the superset interpretation of ser should be acquired
later than the subset interpretation of ester. Our prediction (2) is consistent with
Avrutin and Wexler’s finding (Avrutin and Wexler [1999]) that children make signif-
icantly more errors when the correct interpretation of pronouns requires knowledge of
the interaction of syntactic and discourse-related constraints. Prediction (3) is based on
Sera [1992] finding that Spanish-speaking children seem to draw a distinction between
copulas based on types of predicates (since locatives but not nominals have a prepo-
sition). We have the following predictions for conditions 4 and 5 that were part of a
pilot study. For condition 4 we predicted that if children knew both the construction as
selecting SL properties and the lexical properties of the adjectives, they would perform
as adults. For Condition 5, we predicted that if children knew that IL properties can

be coerced into SL, they should perform as adults.

3.3.2 Subjects

27 Cuban Spanish speaking children ranging from 3;3 to 7;3 (mean 5;2) participated in
this study. In addition 23 adults were given a paper and pencil test.

18 children participated in experiment 1 that included Conditions 3, 4 and 5 and
was further divided in Groups A and B, while 17 children participated in experiment
2 that included Conditions 1 and 2 and was further divided in versions A and B, with
8 children who participated in both experiments. Notice that each experiment tests
different conditions so the same child could have taken both experiments of the AT. The
logic of these divisions will become clear in section 3.3.3 when I describe the materials.

See Appendix Cl and C2 for a complete description of the items and stories used and

70

for the distribution of items for both experiments of the AT and the subsequent four
groups/ list of items for both experiments of the AT and the subsequent 4 groups.

The data from 6 children were eliminated according to the following criteria: If a
subject was never able to make a correction, if he/she clearly did not understand the

task, if he/she did not pay attention to the task.

3.3.3 Experimental Methodology

The experimental design that we used was an Acceptability Task, a version of the Gram-
maticality Judgment Task (Mc Daniel and Cairns [1996]). Every trial (experimental
and fillers) consisted of a short story for context-setting purposes and one experimental
sentence that matched (or not) the context. The child was also presented with pictures

so that he could remember and enjoy the task better.
Procedures

The task was presented to the children by one experimenter as a game in which the
child had to teach Spanish to a puppet called Pepe. The child’s task was to listen to
a particular short story read by the experimenter and then judge whether the sentence
uttered by Pepe was acceptable or not by saying “bien” (good) or “mal” (wrong). The
same experimenter read the short story and manipulated the puppet. The child had
the additional task to feed the puppet a candy if he gave a right answer or a vitamin if
he gave a wrong answer. In the cases in which a mismatch between the visual and the
verbal response was observed, the child was reminded that the candy was a reward for
when Pepe got the correct answer and that the vitamin was intended to make Pepe more
intelligent in the case he got the response wrong. Then, the experimenter repeated the
trial. This case was rare since in the practice session children were trained extensively
in order to master this aspect of the task.

The adults were given a Paper and Pencil test in which they had to read the short

story and write next to the Puppet’s sentence if it was “right” or “wrong”. The adults

71

were not presented with the pictures since they were not relevant for the task. We
included the color pictures in the task for children in order to make them enjoy the task
and remember the short stories better.

The task was introduced to the children in the following manner (the translation
into English is provided below):

Este es Pepe. El ecabe de lleger de les Estados Unidos y hebla an espenol eztmrio. A
veces dice cosas comicas asi’ que tri vas a enseriarle espariol. Cede vez que pepe diga algo
tu’ vas a decirle si estci bien 0 mal. Cuendo este’ mal, le vas a ensear crime se dice porque
tu’ eres el maestro de espariol. Antes de que Pepe diga algo les voy a leer an cuento.
Luege le voy a hacer una pregunta a Pepe. Recuerda que debes prestar muche atencién
para poder decidir si la que dice Pepe esta’. bien 0 mal. Por ejemplo, si la pregunto a Pepe
“g Qué haces en las marianas Pepe?” y Pepe responde: “Yo hacen el café” (Pepe does
the tel/ring), gC'o’mo lo dijo Pepe, bien 0 mal? Lo dijo mal, guarded? Dile a Pepe coma
hay que responder. Entonces, la perte interesante del juego es e’sta. Si Pepe responde
bien, trf le das el caramelo pero si responde mal, le das le vitamina para que se ponga
mds inteligente.

[This is Pepe. He just got here from the USA and speaks a strange Spanish. Some-
times he says funny things so you are going to teach him Spanish. Every time he says
something, you will have to tell him if what he said was right or wrong. If it is wrong,
you are going to teach him how to say it because you are his Spanish teacher. Before
he says anything I will tell you both a story. Then I will ask Pepe something about the
story. Remember that you have to pay attention so that you can decide if what Pepe
says is right or wrong. For example, if I ask Pepe “What do you ado in the morning
Pepe?” and he answers “I makes coffee ” (Pepe does then talking), What do you think,
is it right or wrong? It is wrong, right? Well, then teach him how to say it correctly.
Now, the interesting part of the game is that you are going to feed Pepe a candy if he

says things in good Spanish but you are going to give him a vitamin if he says things

72

wrong. The vitamin will make him become more intelligent]
I provide examples of each condition below. In every trial the child is presented to

a picture that matches the short story’s situation.
Condition 1. Polysemic

Story : Caperucita roja va caminando por el bosque y no quiere encontrarse con el lobo
porque el lobo se come alas personas. Caperucita va con mucho cuidado porque Ie tiene
tremendo miedo al lobo feroz. [Little Red Riding Hood is walking in the woods. She
doesn’t want to meet the wolf because he eats people. Little Red Riding Hood walks
very carefully because she is very afraid of the ferocious wolf.]

Experimenter: A ver Pepe, describeme al lobo.
[Let’s see Pepe if you can describe the wolf]

Pepe (Experimental sentence): El lobo es male.
[The wolf is (ser) bad.]

Child: Bien. (He gives the candy to Pepe)
[Right]

Another child was presented with the experimental sentence “El lobo esta malo”
’The wolf is being bad’ whose target answer was incorrect because male with ester
means “out of order” which is incompatible with the discourse.

The four adjectives (and their respective meanings with either ser or ester ) used in
this condition were: buena ‘good person’,‘working properly’; lista ‘intelligent’, ‘ready’;
viva ‘smart’,‘alive’; male ‘bad’, ‘out of order’.

Each child received 8 trials (2 for each adjective used) in this condition. 7 children
received the trials used in Group A and 9 different children received the trials used
in Group B For example, while one subject received items 1 and 3 (Group A) with
adjective buena, another child received items 2 and 4 (Group B) with the same adjective
buena. Each child would receive 2 trials per adjective, in one trial, the adult answer was
supposed to be “right” while in the other trial, the adult response was supposed to be

“wrong”. This way each child was given the opportunity to answer one question “right”

73

and the other one “wrong” with the same adjective. Two items had to be eliminated in
this condition. Item 1 whose experimental input included the frame estd buena (right)
with the meaning ‘working properly’ had to be eliminated on dialectal grounds. Item 7
whose experimental input included the frame es listo (wrong) with the meaning ‘ready’

had to be eliminated because the context was ambiguous.
Condition 2. “De” complement

Story: Pepa parece una madre muy feliz porque tiene dos hijas muy inteligentes. Las
nifias siempre se sacan las mejores notas del curso y eso tiene a la mama. muy orgullosa.
[Pepa seems to be a very happy mother because she has two very intelligent daughters.
The girls always get the best grades of the class and that has made their mom very
proud]

Experimenter: A ver Pepe, describeme a Pepa.

[Let’s see Pepe if you can describe Pepa.]
Pepe: *Pepa es orgullosa de sus hijas.

[Pepa is (ser) proud of her daughters]
Child: Mal. (he gives the vitamin to Pepe)

[Wrong]

Another child will be presented with the good experimental sentence “Pepa esté.
orgullosa de sus hijas”

The four adjectives used in this condition are only acceptable with ester and they
were: mal de la barrige ‘bad of the stomach’, aburrido de ver television ‘bored of seeing
TV’ (This one had to be eliminated because of a typographic error in the pencil and
paper test taken by adults) , orgullosa de sus hijas ‘proud of her daughters’, and muerto
de hambre ‘dead of hunger’.

Each child received 4 trials in this condition. 7 children received the trials used in
Group A and 9 different children received the trials used in Group B. For example, while
one subject received item 17 (Group A) with adjective mal de la barriga whose adult

response is supposed to be “right”, another child received item 18 (Group B) with the

74

same adjective mal de la barriga whose adult response is supposed to be “wrong”. Each
child would receive 1 trial per adjective. In contrast with condition 1, in Condition 2
the same subject was not given the opportunity to answer one question “right” and the
other one “wrong” with the same adjective. However, each child would receive two trials
that were supposed to be “right” and two trials that were supposed to be “wrong” in
Condition 2. Two items had to be eliminated in this condition. Both items, 19 and 20,
whose experimental input included the frame es aburrido de ver televisién (Wrong) and
estd aburrido de ver televisién (Right), respectively, had to be eliminated because they

had a typographic error in the Paper and Pencil test that adults took.
Condition 3.Context only

Story: Claudia fue a la playa y cogio mucho sol. Cuando llego a la casa le dijo a la
mama que le ardia y picaba la piel. “Clare”, dijo la mama, “si mira com te quemaste...”
[Claudia went to the beach and got a a lot of sun. When she got home, she told her
mother that her skin hurt. “I know” said the mother, “I see that you got a bad suntan”]
Experimenter: A ver Pepe describeme a Claudia.
[Let’s see Pepe if you can describe Claudia]
Pepe: Claudia esta colorada.
[Claudia is (estar) red]
Child: Bien.
[Good]

The experimental sentence “Claudia es colorada” whose adult answer is supposed
to be “wrong” was given to another child. The four adjectives that were used in the
Context condition were: callada ‘quiet’, blenca ‘white’, colorada ‘reddish’ and rojo ‘red’.

Each child received 8 trials (2 for each adjective used) in this condition. 12 children
received the trials used in Group A and 8 different children received the trials used in
Group B. For example, while one subject received two items (one ‘good’ and one ‘bad’

(Group A)) with ser + adjective callada, another child received two items (one ‘good’

and one ‘bad’ (Group B)) with ester + the same adjective callada. Each child would

75

receive 2 trials per adjective, in one trial, the adult answer was supposed to be “right”

while in the other trial, the adult response was supposed to be “wrong”. This way

each child was given the opportunity to answer one question “right” and the other one

“wrong” with the same adjective. No item was eliminated in this condition
subsubsectionCondition 4. With Absolute Condition

Story: La familia Pérez quiere participar en la carrera del domingo pero hay un
problema. Maria va a tener un nifio pronto y tiene una barriga enorme. No puede
correr porque es peligroso para el nifio. [The Perez family wants to participate in the
Sunday’s marathon but there is a problem. Maria is going to have a child and has a big
belly. She can’t run because it is dangerous for the baby]

Experimenter: A ver Pepe, describeme la situacion.
[Let’s see if Pepe can describe the situation]
Pepe: Con Maria embarazada no pueden participar en la carrera del domingo.
[With Mary pregnant they can’t participate in the Sunday’s marathon]
Child: Bien.
[Right]

The four adjectives used in this condition were: embarazada ‘pregnant’, mulata ‘mu-
lata girl’, inteligente ‘intelligent’, rote ‘broken’. While adjectives embarazada and rate
are only acceptable with ester, adjectives mulata and intelligent are strongly preferred
to occur with ser.

Twenty children were presented with 4 trials (one trial per adjective) and they all
received exactly the same experimental sentences. No items were eliminated in this

condition.
Condition 5. Conjunction condition

Story: Pedro va a su primera fiesta solo y se ve muy bonito. La mama se pasr’) mucho
tiempo peinandolo para que Pedro causara muy buena impresién en la fiesta. Si hasta
lo perfume y todo... [Pedro is going to his first party alone and he looks very nice. His

mother spent a lot of time combing him so that Pedro could cause a good impression in

76

the party. She even put him some perfume]

Experimenter: A ver Pepe, descrl’beme a Pedro.
[Let’s see Pepe if you can describe Pedro]
Pepe: Pedro es lindo y peinado.
[Pedro is pretty and combed]
Child: Mal.
[Wrong]

The pair of adjectives that were used in this condition were: lindo ‘pretty’, peinado
‘combed’, modema ‘modern’, rota ‘broken’ , viejo ‘old’, cansada ‘tired’, redonda ‘round’,
and grande ‘big’.

Each child received 4 trials (1 for each pair of adjectives used) in this condition. 12
children received the trials used in Group A and 8 different children received the trials
used in Group B. For example, while one subject received the frame es linda y peinado
(with adult response “wrong” (Group A)), another child received item with the frame
este linda y peinedo (with adult response “right” (Group B)).

No items were eliminated in this condition. The experiment was presented to the
children individually by one experimenter. The children were tested in a quiet room at
their homes in Havana City during the first two weeks of March (2002). The mother
who was sometimes present was instructed not to look or say anything to the child
while he/ she was being tested. In most of the cases, the mother was in some other room
of the house. The materials were presented in a session of 15 to 20 minutes. At the
beginning of the experiments, some practice items were administered to the child. The
number of practice items varied from child to child since the experimenter would only
begin the test after being sure that the child had understood the task. Therefore, more
practice items were administered to those children who took longer to learn the task.

The practice session took approximately from 5 to 10 minutes. The experimenter, who

is a native speaker of Spanish, was a linguistics graduate student of MSU.

77

Materials

The acceptability task had two parts, experiment 1 and experiment 2. Each experiment
was further divided in two groups A and B. Thus experiment 1 tested conditions (3)
Context biased, (4) Absolute clauses and (5) Conjunction while experiment 2 tested
conditions (1) Polysemic ‘free’ and (2) “de” complement. Table 3.8 provides an example

of items received by two children that took different groups of items. Notice that groups

A and B complement each other.

Table 3.8: Examples of Distribution of Items for two children in the AT (SL—Stage

Level; ILr-Individual Level. A: acceptable; N=not acceptable)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Condition Items for Child 1 Group Items for Child 2 Group B
A (Cond 1 and 2)Group A (Cond 1 and 2) Group B
(Cond 3, 4 and 5) (Cond 3, 4 and 5)

1.Poly (SL context)La radio esta (SL context) La radio es
buena (A) ‘The radio is buena (N) ‘The radio is
working properly’(IL con- good’ (IL context) Maria es
text ) Maria esta Buena (N) buena (A) ‘Maria is good’
‘Maria is attractive’

2.‘de’ Comp (SL context) Luis es muerto (SL context) Luis esta
de hambre (N)‘Luis is dead muerto de hambre (A) ‘Luis
of hunger’ is dead of hunger’

3. Context (SL context) Silvia esta (SL context) Silvia es
callada (A) ‘Silvia is quiet callada (N) ‘Silvia is quiet’
(now)’ (IL context) Maria (ILcontext)Mar1’aes callada
esta callada (N) ‘Maria is (A) ‘Marfa is quiet’
quiet (now)’

4. Absolute Con Maria embarazada Con Maria em-
...(A) ‘With Mary preg— barazada ..... (A) ‘With
nant...’ Con Pedrito Mary pregnant...’ Con
inteligente... (N) ‘With Pedrito inteligente ...... (N)
Pedrito intelligent ..... ’ ‘With Pedrito intelligent....’

5.Conj. La radio esta nueva y La radioesnuevay rota (N)
rota(A) ‘The radio is new ‘The radio is new and bro-
and broken’ ken’

 

The total number of trials for experiment 1 (groups A and B) was 26 (16 experimental

sentences and 10 fillers) and were presented to the child in a session of approximately

78

 

20 minutes. The total number of trials for experiment 2 (groups A and B) was 20 (12

experimental sentences and 8 fillers).

3.3.4 Results

In this section we report on the results obtained in the 3 main experimental conditions
that tested the respondents ability to understand differences between ser and ester.
We also report the results for the pilot test that included conditions 4 and 5. Our
results show that the trends are in the direction we expected with condition 2’s means
being higher for both adults and children (the easiest condition) and condition 3 being
the hardest for children. First we provide the means per condition and then we use
regression analysis to obtain estimates that are free from bias without losing information.
We compare the means per age groups per condition. Table 3.9 illustrates the means
obtained by three age groups, adults, young children (3;3-5;5) and old children (5;6—7;3)

(see Appendix C.3 for the means and raw scores per condition in three age groups).

Table 3.9: Means per condition per three age groups

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Condition Adults (n) Young children (n) Old children(n)
CIA 0.867 (11) 0.5 ( 4) 0.76 (3)

C18 0.909(11) 0.555 (6) 0.833 (3)

C2A 1(11) 0.833(4) 0.777 (3)

C28 0.9696 (11) 0.6666 (6) 0.8888 (3)

C3A 0.854(12) 0.625 (7) 0.675 (5)

C3B 0.9431(11) 0.4375 (2) 0.5416 (6)

C4 0.7873 (23) 0.5277 (9) 0.5454 (11)
C5A 0.7916 (12) 0.428(7) 065(5)

C5B 0.8863 (11) 0.75 (2) 0.708 (6)

 

 

 

A t-test shows that the difference between the means of young and old children is
not significant in any condition (p > .05), suggesting that we do not find age effects. A
t-test also shows that the differences between means of groups A and B of conditions 1,

2, 3, and 5, are not significant for any age group (p > .05) (see Appendix C.4 for detailed

79

comparisons and the t and p-values). Since we do not find significant differences that
depend on the different versions of the conditions and on the age of children, I compare
the means between adults and children in the 5 conditions (see Appendix C.5 for the
scores and means per condition when we collapse young and old children’s groups and

versions A and B of conditions, I, 2, 3, and 5). Table 3.10 shows this information.

Table 3.10: Means per condition in adults and children

 

 

 

 

 

 

Condition Adults n Children n
Cond 1 0.8867 22 0.6245 16
Cond 2 0.9848 22 0.7751 16
Cond 3 0.8986 23 0.5796 20
Cond 4 0.7873 23 0.5376 20
Cond 5 0.839 23 0.6198 20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Chi-square test shows that the difference between the means of adults and children
is only significant in condition 3 (p:0.0I) (see Appendix C.6 for Chi-square and p-values
for comparison of means between children and adults). In all the other conditions the
difference between children and adults was not found to be significant (p > .05). A
Chi-square test also shows that the means of condition 1, 2 and 3 for children are not
significantly different (p > .05).

There are many reasons to treat these results as preliminary. First, since not all
children went through all conditions, we cannot compare conditions 1, 2 and 3 together
because they are done with different children. Second, because so many items were
eliminated it is difficult to make real good comparisons for ser and ester. Third because
adults were not behaving at ceiling conditions it may be that the experiment has some
problems. Because of that we only present the means per condition for the different

groups.

Now, we proceed to report our results by using regression analysis. Regression
analysis has a number of advantages over alternatives such as ANOVAS: the results can

be readily interpreted in terms of probabilities of certain events occurring, and the size

80

of the bias can be calculated 2. Table 3.11 shows the variables recorded in the database,

and table 3.12 shows the descriptive statistics for these variables 3.

Table 3.11: Variable description

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Variable Name Description

Mainvar :1 if answer is correct, :0 otherwise

Child :1 if respondent is a child,=:0 otherwise

Age Age, in months. Recorded only for children

Dyes =1 if correct answer for the question is‘yes’, =0 if correct answer is ‘no’
Filler Percentage of correct answers in filler questions

 

Table 3.12: Descriptive Statistics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Variable Mean St. Deviation Min. Max. No obs.
Mainvar .74 .44 0 1 1135
Child .46 .5 0 49
Age 62 11.7 39 87 27
Dyes .5 .5 0 1 1135
Filler .84 .14 .43 1 50

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a well known fact in the Psycholinguistics literature that respondents tend to
use “yes” as a default answer. Therefore, we begin the analysis by testing for a possible
“yes”obias. This bias is common in experiments with children (see for instance, Chien
and Wexler [1990]). Because it is observed in children more than in adults, it leads to
higher differences in observed performance between adults and children than those that
effectively exist. To test the presence of this bias, we use the fact that when dividing
the items into adjective-groups (more specifically the adjectives used in condition 1 and

condition 3), in 8 of these groups each respondent had been administered one question

 

2The regression results were also reproduced using only the observations where the correct answer
is ’no’. We found that the results, in terms of the regression coefficients for the variables of interest,
were virtually identical. In a number of cases, these coefficients were estimated with smaller standard
errors than in the benchmark regressions.

3The statistics were computed using Stata, a standard statistics software used in Social Sciences.

81

with “no” and one with “yes” as the correct answer. Thus, for instance, a respondent

would receive sentences in (13) with the copula ser.

(13) a. Pepa es callada “yes”
b. Pepa es callada “no”
‘Pepa is (IL) quiet’

Another person would receive sentences in (14) with copula ester “.

(14) a. Pepa esta. callada “yes”
b. Pepa esta callada “no”
‘Pepa is (SL) quiet’

Thus, an observation is a pair of answers from the same respondents, where the
questions belonged to the same adjective group, one question had ‘yes’ (acceptable) and
one had ‘no’(not acceptable) for the correct answer and only one question had been
answered correctly. Our test is motivated by the observation that if a respondent had 1
correct and 1 wrong answer, in the absence of bias he / she would fail to respond correctly
half the time the “no” question and half the time the “yes” question. More formally,
for this subset of questions the probability of making a mistake should be independent
of the type of question. For the whole sub sample: Prob(right) = Prob(wrang) = .5.
Consider now the conditional probability of answering correctly given that the correct
answer is ‘no’ 5: Prob(right | no) = Prob(right | no) / Prob(no) Moreover, if answering

correctly is independent of the nature (yes, no) of the correct answer, we have

Prob(right) x Prob(no)
Prob(no)
Prob(right)

Prob(right | no)

 

I I

——.5

An aggregate analysis indicates that Prob(right no) is exactly .5 for adults, so no

 

4It is important to bear in mind that the“yes” (right) and “no” (wrong) answers depended on the
context set by a short story.

5The notation Prob(right-no) is to be read as the probability of the answer being right given that
the correct answer is ‘no’.

82

bias is observed, and .23 for children, with the hypothesis of no bias (Ho: P (right —
no) t .5) rejected at the 1% confidence level.

A disaggregated analysis by adjective broadly confirms this pattern finding: the null
hypothesis of no bias (absence of bias) is rejected at the 10% confidence level for only 1
(buena) of the 8 adjective groups in adults (and for that particular group it indicates a
bias towards answering “no”), but it is rejected for 5 of the 8 adjective groups (buena,
callada, blance, colomda and rojo) in children.

Once the bias is established, the question remains of how to obtain estimates that
are free from it. A common way to deal with this problem in linguistics is to eliminate
all observations obtained for questions with “yes” as a correct answer. Although this
procedure effectively leaves only observations that are bias-free, this is done at the cost
of eliminating a substantial number of observations, half in our case, with the consequent
loss in estimating precision. We begin with a summary report of the results using the
pooled dataset (all observations pooled). The first regression intends to estimate the

probability of giving a correct answer controlling for “yes” bias:

Mainvar:- .84— .4lchild+ .056dyes+ .29dyesarchild
(.00) (.00) (.03) (.00)

The numbers in parentheses are p-values. The results indicate that the probability
of answering correctly for adults (child=0) when there is no bias (dyes = 0, dyes*child =
0) is .84. For children (child = 1), this probability is .84 - .41 x 1: .43. The difference in
probabilities of answering correctly between adults and children is statistically significant
(p=.00). It is important to notice that the probability that adults answer correctly is
less than 100%.As we are comparing child knowledge of ser and ester with respect to
the adult grammar, we are going to focus on the difference in performance between
children and adults.

As is clear in this regression, the issue arises as to how to interpret the probability
that children answer correctly, given that the probability that adults answer correctly is

lower than 1. We will argue in what follows that the relevant statistic to focus on is the

83

difference in probabilities between adults and children. We assume that the failure of
adults answering correctly with Prob = 1 is due to the fact that the answers reflect not
only understanding of the subject on ser and ester but also the quality of experimental
design. A general empirical model for the probability that adults answer correctly would

be:
(2)Prob(correct|adult) r 1 + b1 Ezdesign l b2(other factors) 4 e1

where ‘other factors’ include the “yes” bias, ...etc. For children the model would be:
(3)Prob(correct|child) r e —l— b1 Eacdesign I b2(other factors) I e2

where a is the probability that children answer correctly when experimental design
and other biases are controlled for. Clearly, a is our parameter of interest, but in an
equation such as (1) above it cannot be estimated since the variable Ex design in (2)

and (3) is not observable. However, if we subtract (3) from (2):

Prob(cerrectlAdult) - Prob(cerrectlchild) : 1 — a -l- (blEzdesign — blErdesign)
+ (b2otherfect0rs) — b2other f actors)
l 61 — e2

:1—elre3,

where e3: e1 l e2 is a statistical error, the coefficients associated with the variable
child in (1) is then an estimator (with opposite sign) of the parameter (1 — a) in (4).
Thus, given the results in (1), where (l-a ) is .41, we have a = .59. In what follows we will
focus the analysis on this coefficient (the estimate of (1-a)) rather than in the absolute
magnitude of the probabilities (2) and (3) which are contaminated by the effects of the
quality of the experimental design.

We proceed to report the results regarding the three main questions addressed in

this thesis:

84

1. Do children show different performance between the copulas that would allow us

to suggest that ester is acquired before ser?

2. What kind of information (syntactic, semantic or pragmatic) do children use when

distinguishing ser and ester.

3. Do we observe age effects?

In order to answer the first question, we examine whether children show better per-
formance with ester than with ser. Remeber that the hypothesis that ester is acquired
earlier than ser is consistent with the Semantic Subset Principle (Crain and Thornton
[1998], Crain [1992], Crain et al [1994], Grain and Philip [1993]). It was already said
that this principle would lead children acquiring language to first choose the represen-
tation that is true in the smallest set of circumstances. As ester can be a subset of ser,
it is reasonable to expect that children should acquire ester before ser.

To test the acquisition of ser and ester we created a variable that interacts variables
ser and “child” (ser-ch) and captures the difference between children and adults in ser
/ ester comprehension. Using an argument analogous to that of equation 4, we focus on

this coefficient as the relevant result.

mainverr .83+ .093er— .03serschild— .41child+ .04dyes+ .31dyesschild
(.00) (.00) (.61) (.00) (.11) (.00)

The coefficient in ser*child has the correct sign (-.03) implying that children have
relatively less trouble answering questions with ester, but this coefficient is not statisti-
cally significant (the associated p-value for the hypothesis that the coefficient is different
from zero is .61) 6. A disaggregated analysis by condition, not reported, confirms this

result.

 

6The negative sign of variable ser*child indicates that is easier to answer experimental sentences
with ester than with ser. A positive sign would indicate that ser is easier than ester, which is not the
case here.

85

We also tested whether the comprehension of ser versus ester depends on the age
of children, but again the coefficient associated with the ser / ester x age was found to
be small and statistically insignificant, suggesting no age effects.

Then we study what kind of information (syntactic, semantic or pragmatic) is used
by children when distinguishing between ser and ester. In order to examine what
type of information is used by children when employing ser and ester, we divided the
items with respect to factors that affect the choice of ser and ester. After doing so
we obtain our 3 main experimental conditions. In condition 1 (Polysemic), we control
for lexical and semantic properties of the combination copulai—adjective, in condition
2 (“de” complement), we control for syntactic properties of the copula, in condition
3 (Context only), we control for contextual properties only. As a separate study we
consider conditions 4 (Absolute clauses) and 5 (Conjunction), in which we control for
lexical properties of the adjectives and for semantic properties of adjectival conjuncts,
respectively.

We run the following regression in each condition:
mainver :: b0 + blchild I b2dyes + b3dyesch + e

The table 3.13 shows the coefficient obtained by both children and adults in the five
conditions.
Table 3.13: Coefficients per condition for children and adults

n tion . i . ts
.44 .855

.64 .97

.4 .88
.4 .73
.375 .78

 

Using an argument similar to that of equation 4, we use the difference in probability

between children and adults (or b1), as the object of interest, noting that a large (in

86

absolute value) b1 implies that the true probability of children answering correctly
(which is 1 - b1) is small. Table 3.14 analyzes the results regarding the coefficient b1 in
our main experimental conditions, and table 3.15 contains the information of coefficient

b1 in conditions 4 and 5.

Table 3.14: Coefficient b1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Condition Coefficient Standard Deviation p-value Statistical ranking
l -.417 .0778 .00 2
2 -.33 .1023 .00 1
3 -.48 .0648 .00 3
Table 3.15: Coefficient b1 in conditions 4 and 5
Condition Coefficient Standard Deviation p-value Statistical ranking
4 -.33 .1037 .00 1
5 -.407 .0980 .00 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First we discuss the results for our experimental conditions 1, 2, and 3. A t-test
for equality of means shows that coefficient (in condition) 3 is statistically higher than
1 7 (p=.00), and that coefficient 1 is statistically higher than 2 (p=.00). These results
allow us to say that children seem to be using syntactic information in order to choose
either ser or ester. In other words, children performed better in condition 2 (“de”
complement) perhaps because the presence of a “de” complement helps them to select
ester over ser.

The second implication of these results is that children seem to perform better when
they have lexical / semantic cues than when they have only contextual cues. In condition
1 (Polysemic free), children rely on the lexical meaning of the combo Cop+Adj while in
condition 3 (context only), they have to rely solely in the context.

We now discuss the results for conditions 4 and 5. Coefficient 5 was found to be

statistically smaller than 3 (p=.00) but not different from 1 (p=.16), and coefficient 4

 

7All results are at the 1% confidence level unless otherwise noted.

87

was not different from coefficient 2 (p=.5). At this point we do not know what to make
of these results.

Our fourth question was related to age effects. We found a significant positive
correlation between the age of children and their percentage of correct responses in
the filler questions (p=.00), showing that children do pay more attention as they get
older. This should of course be of some concern: it could be that all the differences
in correct responses in the main questions are due simply to the fact that adults pay
more attention to the questions themselves. To address this issue, we did the previous
analysis again controlling for the attention factor summarized in the filler variable. We
found that the differences between adults and children become smaller, so the attention
effect exists, but is quantitatively very small. As an example, regression 5 becomes,
with the inclusion of the filler variable:

mainver = .56+ .093er— .033er =0: child— .38child
(.00) (.00) (.62) (.00)

+.05dyes f .31dyes * child+ .3filler
(.1) (.00) (.04)

So the coefficient of interest (on the variable child) is -.38 instead of -.41, a difference
of 3 percentage points. In general, the results strongly confirm that the differences in
performance are not driven by differences in attention. Finally, it is worth pointing out
that we found significant age effects in the fillers but not in answers to the experimental
sentences, again casting doubt on a simple explanation of performance driven by the
capacity of concentrating of older versus younger children.

Before concluding this section, it is important to keep in mind that the results -
vary depending on the statistics used. Notice that when we analyze the results of the
Acceptability Task by focusing only on the means obtained by every subject, we are
not controlling for the potential extra variables like attention, experimental noise and
“yes”-bias that could affect subjects’ performance and that we took into account while

using regressions.

88

3.3.5 Discussion

Since the Regression analysis controls for different variables that a simple comparisons of
means does not, I will mainly base the current discussion on the results obtained through
the regressions. Before discussing the results of the AT it is pertinent to refer to the
fact that adults did not performed at the 100% correct in any condition. Their mean in
performance in the first 3 conditions is 90.16% (performance in the pilot conditions was
even lower, 75.5%). Notice that adults fail to give the correct response around the 10%
of the time. I think that this failure may be related to several factors. First, the task
was complex since subjects had to give metalinguistic judgments. Second, the judgment
had to be based on the context provided so a correct answer would depend on whether
the subject was able to match the experimental sentence to a particular context. Third,
the task was given to adults as a Paper and Pencil test. It is possible that we find
variations in adult response that depend on whether the experimental input is visual
(reading) or verbal (hearing). Finally, it is also possible that because the task was long,
adults got distracted or were not paying enough attention. The 25.5 % of failure in adult
performance in the pilot conditions could be related to the fact that these conditions
test knowledge of properties that cannot be absolutely considered as either acceptable
or not acceptable.

Since the adult performance was not 100% and because the objective of this thesis
is to explore how much Spanish-speaking children know about copular use as compared
to adults, we based our results and discussion of the results on the differences in perfor-
mance between adults and children.

The first important finding of the Acceptability Task is that children did not perform
adult-like in any condition. This difference between adults and children is significant
(p=.00). As it is pertinent, we have to address the issue of why children did not
perform adult-like in the AT while they performed similar (above chance) to adults in the

PST. Clearly, this difference between experiments can be interpreted as contradictory.

89

However, I do not think this is the case. The first difference between the two tasks is
one related to simplicity. In the AT, children had to make metalinguistic judgments as
opposed to the simpler task of choosing a picture in the PST. Due to this, the PST was
not only easier but also faster than the AT. A second major difference is that while the
context for ser and ester was immediately available as visual information in the PST,
children had to first pay attention to the context set by a story (as verbal information)
and second, remember the story in order to decide if the experimental sentence used
the correct copula in that context. Thus, it is reasonable to expect that children’s
performance will be lower in the AT than in the PST.

Our line of reasoning is supported by previous studies (Avrutin and Wexler [1999])
that show that children perform poorly when pragmatics is involved. Remember that
children performed least adult-like in the only condition in which the choice of copula
was determined solely by context. Therefore, we cannot argue that our results in the AT
provide evidence against the hypothesis that Spanish—speaking children know the differ-
ences in meaning between ser and ester. I think that children’s different performance
in the two tasks is mainly due to differences in the tasks themselves.

Our second finding is that the results obtained allow us to rank children’s per-
formance in the following manner in the order of most to least adult-like: (1) “dc”-
complement, (2) Polysemic Pfee, and (3) Context. Since the difference in performance
(between adults and children, coefficient b1) between conditions was found to be sta-
tistically significant and because every condition controlled for different properties of
ser and ester we can interpret this ranking as showing the kinds of knowledge (and the
order in which they use them) children exploit in order to use copulas ser and ester.
Our findings confirm Sera’s intuition that Spanish-speaking children seem to be using
syntactic cues in order to discriminate between the copulas. Remember that in Sera’s
study, children knew that ser is used with nominals and ester with locatives. Sera,

based on the observations that i) the only difference between these predicates is the

90

presence of a preposition in locatives but not in nominals and ii) children did not show
to use semantic information (between objects and events) in locative constructions in
order to use the appropriate copula, claims that Spanish-speaking children’s base their
choice of copula on predicate categories. In our experiment, children performed better in
the condition “de” complement, in which they had to rely on the syntactic requirement
that ester but not ser can take “de” complements. The fact that children’s performance
was better in this condition than on the condition that controlled for lexical meaning
of the frame Copula+Adjective, suggests that children rely on syntactic information
more than in semantic information. Also, the fact that children performed poorly in
the condition that controlled for contextual factors alone supports our prediction that
children are having more problems with the pragmatic dimension of copular use.

Our third finding that children performed better with ester than with ser is com-
patible with the hypothesis that children use the Semantic Subset Principle in order
to acquire the Spanish copulas. However, the fact that no significant differences were
found between children’s performances with ser and ester does not allow us to confirm
the hypothesis that ester is acquired earlier than ser. Our fourth finding is that age
did not affect children’s performance in the experimental sentences. It is important
to note, however, that older subjects performed better than younger subjects in the
fillers. We interpret this as showing that the experimental results that we obtained were
not dependent on attention or other extra-linguistic factors that could interfere with
subject’s performance. Therefore, we consider the differences in performance to reflect

grammatical competence.

3.4 Summary of chapter 3

In this chapter, we conducted two comprehension experiments of ser and ester in Span-
ish child language. The first experiment was a Picture Selection Task that tested com-

prehension of the discourse properties of ester and the second experiment was an Ac-

91

ceptability Task that tested different properties (syntactic, semantic and pragmatic) of
both ser and ester. The results in the PST show that Spanish-speaking children know
that ser and ester are not synonyms and that they have different discourse properties.
The results in the AT show that the pragmatic dimension of copula use is still very
complex for children from ages 3 to 7. The fact that children perform better when
syntactic cues are present than when semantic/ lexical cues are available, suggests that
children rely more on syntax than in semantics when they have to decide for one or the
other copula.

Also although children’s performance did not show a significant effect depending on
whether ser or ester was used, our results showed a tendency in the direction that we
predicted. Estar seems to be easier than ser. Further research will need to address
if Spanish-speaking children are in fact using the Semantic Subset Principle that we
hypothesize they might use for distinguishing between the different meanings of the

Spanish copulas.

92

Chapter 4

Conclusions

The main purpose of this thesis was to investigate if Spanish-speaking children distin-
guished between the meanings of ser and ester. As a way of concluding, let us consider
again the main questions that I posed in chapter 1 and summarize the answers they

received throughout this thesis.
0 Do children distinguish between meanings of ser and ester ?

This question was answered based on the results of the Picture Selection Task that was
carried in two different Spanish dialectal groups: Cuban and Chilean. As we already
saw, both groups of children showed knowledge that ester is used when describing
marked properties of the subject. This finding provides support for the claim that
Spanish-speaking children had already mastered some of the properties of ester by age

3.
0 Do Spanish-speaking children acquire one copula before the other?

As we saw in the beginning of chapter 3, we based our prediction that Spanish-speaking
children might acquire ester before ser on the Semantic Subset Principle. As there are
cases in which ester entails ser and therefore the set of circumstances in which a ester+
Pred. is true is smaller than the set of circumstances in which ser+ Pred. is true, it is
reasonable to think that children will acquire ester first. The results in the Acceptability

Task confirm this prediction since children had less problems answering with ester than

93

with ser. However the result was not found to be statistically significant and therefore
we cannot safely conclude that children are using the Semantic Subset Principle in order

to acquire ser and ester.

0 What types of information do children exploit in order to use the copula appro-

priately?

The results for the Acceptability Task reported in chapter 3 provide evidence that
children use syntactic information in order to distinguish between the usage of ser and
ester. The fact that children performed much better in the condition in which ester
(but not ser) can take “de” complements than in the conditions that controlled for
lexical / semantic factors, was taken as evidence that children appear to be more sensitive
to distributional cues than to lexical /semantic cues. Moreover, as children performance
was least adult-like in the condition in which the only clues for copula usage were given
by the context, I argued that children seem to have more problems with the discourse
factors that influence copula choice. Therefore, in the order of more used information
to the least used information, we can arrange them as follows: first syntactic, second

lexical /semantic and third contextual information.
0 Do we observe developmental stages in the use of ser and ester?

In this study we did not find evidence that children older than 3 years old go through
different developmental stages of ser and ester. This finding contrasted with the result
showing that age affected performance in the fillers. As the fillers were considered
to show attention (that increased with older children), and because we did not find
this effect in the experimental sentences, we considered our experimental data clean of

attention confounds.
0 Do children divide adjectives as having a ser or ester status?

This question was motivated by Sera’s interpretation Sera [1992] that Spanish-speaking

children draw a distinction between adjectives that have ser status and adjectives that

94

have an ester status. Given that in the PST children were very happy in assigning an
ester interpretation to adjectives that typically take the copula ser, we claimed that the
answer to question 5 must be negative. Our experiment provides evidence that children
have not acquired adjectives by distinguishing between adjectives that typically appear
with ser or ester.

This thesis was also motivated by the hope to provide insights into the theoretical
debate of whether the copula is a dummy item, a mere carrier of inflection. As I
already suggested in chapter 1, the idea of having two different lexical copulas with
different semantic and pragmatic properties would intuitively indicate that ser and

1. Unfortunately, this thesis does not provide support

esterhave different semantics
in any direction of this debate. I believe empirical investigation of copula use cannot
show light into this debate since to explain copular distribution and how it is learned
by children does not necessarily imply more understanding of the syntax of the copulas

since the distinctions seem to be mainly semantic.

4.1 Suggestions for further research

An important question of this thesis dealt with the issue of which copula is acquired
earlier in Spanish child language. Although we saw a tendency in the right direction,
namely that children seem to perform better with ester sentences, our results did not
support our experimental hypothesis. However it is possible that children use the Se—
mantic Subset Principle in early stages of copula acquisition. Our results show that
children by age 3 already know that ester is used with marked predicates. I would like
to suggest that it would be worthy to test semantic copular differences with children

whose ages range between 2;0 and 2;9.

 

’Maienborn [2000] treats the different uses of ser and ester as following solely from pragmatic
considerations. She argues that the Spanish, German and English copula have the same semantics.
I cannot subscribe to Maienborn’s view since an analysis that only takes into account the pragmatic
properties of ser and ester leaves unexplained the aspectual incompatibility that arises between copula
ear and adjectival participials

95

Another issue that needs to be addressed empirically is how frequent are 361' and ester
in the input. In the introduction, we saw that ser and ester are used frequently in early
child speech (Sera [1992]). However, we need a serious analysis of corpus data in order
to examine carefully the relationship between the input and children’s production of the
copula. This is crucial for understanding what role the input plays in the acquisition of
the Spanish copula. In this thesis we defended the idea against Sera, that children do not
distinguish between ser or ester types of adjectives. However, we could not determine if
Spanish-speaking children learn the Cop +Adj construction based on how frequent they
appear in the input. It is possible that children instead of using aspectual/semantic clues
in order to determine, for example, what copula appears with certain adjectives, just use
frequency clues. Our pilot data about adjectival conjunction suggest that children do not
know that conjuncts should be of the same semantic type in order for the construction
to be acceptable in Spanish. Therefore, it is possible that instead of using semantic
information in order to use the appropriate copula with certain adjectives based on
semantic considerations, children only know that, for example, ester but not ser usually
appears with participial adjectives. If an experiment shows that children reject the
acceptability of ser plus a frequent participial adjective such as cansado ‘tired’ (assuming
that cansado is in fact a frequent adjective in the input) but judge as acceptable the
appearance of ser plus an infrequent participial adjective such as cerrado‘close’(with
the meaning of introverted. For example, Juan es una persona cerrade ’Juan is an
introverted person), we would have evidence for claiming that children rely more on
frequency information than in semantic information in order to decide whether ser or
ester is correct in adjectival predicates.

Another theoretical issue that would be worth to investigate in the future is whether
Spanish-speaking children distinguish between IL and SL predicates. Remember that
Becker [2001] claims that English-speaking children honor this universal distinction

by omitting the copula in IL predicates but not in SL predicates. Since Spanish has

96

been considered to mark the IL/SL distinction in the grammar (Becker [2001], Diesing
[1988]) by means of two different lexical copulas, it qualifies as an ideal language to test
the acquisition of the distinction.

Finally, I would like to suggest that any experimental study of ser and ester should
take into account the pragmatic factors that affect the choice of ser and ester. I hope to
have shown in this thesis how important they are in order to account for differences in
the distribution ofserand ester. The results in the PST suggest that we need to consider
pragmatics since the children seem to know the different discourse properties of ser and
ester. If they did not know that ester but not ser was linked to the discourse, they
would not have been able to perform adult-like as they did.

I hope that this thesis contributes to the understanding of how Spanish speaking
children acquire ser and ester. Clearly, much research is still needed. I certainly do
not want to conclude this thesis before saying that I hope that it serves the purpose
of getting more scholars interested in the acquisition of the copula by Spanish-speaking
children, the same way I became interested in the topic after encountering Sera and

Becker’s work in child language acquisition.

97

Appendix A
Norming Study

The Norming study consisted of 12 sentences that native speakers had to fill in with

either ser or ester. The items used were the following:

a. La sirenita -- linda
‘The Little Mermaid--- is pretty’

b. Juanito __ listo
‘Juanito _-- smart’

c. Lola, la jirafa,_--alta
‘Lola, the giraffe--- tall’

(1. La comida --- caliente
‘The food -.- hot’

e. La pulgarcita -- bajita
‘Thumbelina --- short’

f. La nifia -_- rubia
‘The girl is blonde’

g. El platano -.. amarillo
‘The banana -._ yellow’

h. El plato -- vacfo
‘The dish --- empty’

i. La cebra --_ rayada
‘The zebra _-_ striped’

j. E] tomate ---rojo
‘The tomato --- red’

k. La pelicula --- buena
‘The movie _-good’

1. Pedro --- cansado
‘Pedro..- tired’

98

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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99

Appendix B

Picture Selection Task

B.1 Items for the PST

Items for the Cuban group:

Practice item:

I.

2.

10.

ll.

12.

LCual nifia regala la flor?

’Which girl gives the flower?’

LCual televisor tiene una silla? (F)
‘Which television has a chair?’
LCual maleta tiene un barco? (F)
‘Which suitcase has a ship?’

LCual sirenita esta linda?

‘Which little mermaid is pretty?’
LCual botella tiene una revista? (F)
‘Which bottle has a magazine?’
LCua’l jirafa esta alta?

‘Which giraffe is tall?’

LCual sombrero tiene un zapato? (F)
‘Which hat has a shoe?’

LEn cual taza hay un plate? F)
‘Which cup is a dish on?’

LEn cual carro hay una bicicleta? (F)
‘Which car is a bike on?’

(gCual Pulgarcita esta bajita?
‘Which Thumbelina is short?’
LCual jirafa patea a la mujer? (F)
‘Which giraffe kicks the woman?’
LEn cual mesa hay un camién? (F)
‘Which table is a truck on?’

LCual nifia esta rubia?

‘Which girl is blonde?’

Note: The (F) stands for Filler.

Items for the Chilean group:

100

Practice item:

10.

ll.

12.

13.

LCual nifia regala la flor?

‘Which girl gives the flower?’

qual silla esta sobre un televisor? (F)
‘Which chair is on the tv?’

LCual barco esta sobre una maleta? (F)
‘Which ship is on a suitcase?’

LCual cebra esta rayada?

‘Which zebra is striped?’

LCual revista esta sobre una botella? (F)
‘Which magazine is on a bottle?’

LCual jirafa esta alta?

‘Which giraffe is tall?’

LCual zapato esta sobre un sombrero? (F)
‘Which shoe is on a hat?’

LEn cual taza hay un plate? (F)
‘Which cup is a plate on?’

LEn cual auto hay una bicicleta? (F)
‘Which car is a bike on?’

LCual Pulgarcita esta bajita?

‘Which Thumbelina is short?’

LCual jirafa patea a la mujer? (F)
‘Which giraffe kicks the woman?’

LEn cual mesa hay un camién? (F)
‘Which table is a truck on?’

qual nia esta rubia?

‘Which girl is blonde?’

LCual tomate esta rojo?

‘Which tomato is red?’

Note: The (F) stands for Filler.

101

B.2 Scores per child for PST

102

Table B.1: Scores per adjective per child for the PST (1:correct, Orincorrect) Cuban

Group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subjects age esta linda esta alta esta baja esta rubia
1 39 1 1 0 0
2 40 1 I 0 0
3 43 1 0 1 0
4 43 l O l 0
5 47 1 1 1 0
6 51 0 1. 1. 1
7 52 0 1 1 0
8 52 I l I l
9 53 1 1 1 0
10 54 I l l 1
11 55 1 1 1 1
12 62 1 I I 0
I3 62 0 1 l l
14 63 1 1 I 1
15 65 1 1 1 0
16 65 . 1 l 0
I7 65 l 1 1 1
18 65 0 1 1 1
19 67 1 I l 0
20 67 1 1. 1 0
21 67 l l 1 0
22 67 l I 1 l
23 67 1 1 1 1
24 70 1 l l 0
25 74 1 1 1 0
26 74 1 1 1 0
27 76 1 1. 1 0
28 77 1 1 1 0
29 87 l l 1 l
30 52 1 1 1 0
Total score 25 28 28 11
% Child 83.3 93.3 93.3 36.6
% Adult (n:25) 72 88 100 52

 

 

 

 

 

 

103

 

Table 8.2: Scores per adjective per child for the PST (1=correct, 0=incorrect) Chilean
Group

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subjects age estal rayada esta alta esta bajita esta rubia esta rojo
1 55 I l 1 0 I
2 49 I l 0 0 l
3 55 1 l l 0 1
4 54 0 0 0 1 1
5 56 1 1 1 0 l
6 53 1 0 0 1 1
7 68 1 1 l 0 l
8 50 0 1 1 0 0
9 49 1 1 1 0 1
10 58 1 1 1 0 0
11 52 0 1 1 0 1
I2 59 1 l I 0 1
I3 58 1 l 1 0 1
I4 67 I l l 0 l
15 62 1 1 1 0 1
16 71 1 1 1 0 1
17 67 1 1 l 0 1
I8 70 l l I 0 1
Total Score 15 16 15 2 16
% Child 83.3 88.88 83.3 11.11 88.88
% Adult (n=9) 88.88 100 100 88.88 100

 

104

B.3 Pictures for PST

105

Figure B.1: Picture for Adj. ‘Tall-ser’
,
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41335
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,. if?“ I /\
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Figure B.2: Picture for Adj. ‘TaII-estar’

 

 

 

 

 

106

Figure B.3: Picture for Adj. ‘Pretty-ser’

 

 

 

1

 

 

 

107

Figure 85: Picture for Adj. ‘Short-ser’

 

Figure B.6: Picture for Adj. ‘Short-estar’

 

108

Appendix C
Acceptability Task

C.1 Stories and items for the Acceptability Task

C.1.1 Condition 1. Polysemic “Free”
Story 1

Pablo puso la radio ayer para escuchar mt’tsica pero no funcionaba. Hoy, e1 papa’. se
la arreglé asi que Pablo se puso muy contento porque ya puede escuchar su mt’tsica
preferida. A ver pepe, describeme la radio de Pablo.

1. La radio esté. buena.

2. La radio es buena.
Story 2

Todos los vecinos conocen a Maria como la buena del barrio. Cuando Maria se encuentra
con alguien en la calle siempre saluda y sonrie. No discute nunca y ademas, se la pasa
haciéndole favores a la gente. A ver Pepe, describeme a Maria.

3. Maria esta buena.

4. Maria es buena.
Story 3

Al perro de Pablo hay que llevarlo al veterinario porque se rompio la patica. Juanito
bafié y peiné al perro antes de salir para que el veterinario lo encontrara limpio y bonito.

A ver Pepe, describeme al perro de Juanito.

109

5. El perro de Pablo esta listo.

6. El perro de Pablo es listo.
Story 4

El perro de Juanito entiende todo lo que le dicen. Si le dicen “siéntate”, él se sienta. Si
le dicen “dame la patica” él la da. Parece que lo tienen muy bien amaestrado porque
siempre obedece. A ver Pepe, describeme al perro de Juanito.

7. El perro de Juanito esta listo.

8. El perro de Juanito es listo.
Story 5

Pedro queria despertar al gate. Lo toco pero el gate no se movie. Pedro penso que el
gato se habI’a muerto y 10 teen de nuevo. Esta vez el gato se estiro y bostezé. Pedro
respire aliviado. A ver Pepe, describeme al gato de Pedro.

9. El gato esta vivo.

10. El gato es vivo.
Story 6

Pablo tiene un gate muy vivo . Cuando destroza las flares del jardin 1e echa la culpa a
otros gates, cuando pelea dice que él no empezé la pelea. Siempre queda como el que
no hizo nada malo. A ver Pepe, describeme al gate de Pablo.

11. El gato esta vivo.

12. El gato es vivo.
Story 7

Maria no puede encender la lavadora porque se acaba de romper. Qué problema porque
Maria no tiene mas ropa limpia que ponerse. Ahora va a tener que esperar a que el
plomero venga a reparar la lavadora. A ver Pepe, describeme la lavadora.

13. La lavadora esta mala.

110

14. La lavadora es mala.
Story 8

Caperucita roja va caminando por el bosque y no quiere encontrarse al lobo porque el
lobo se come alas personas. Caperucita va con mucho cuidado porque 1e tiene tremendo
miedo a1 lobo feroz. A ver pepe, describeme al lobo.

15. El lobo esta male.

16. El lobo es male.

C.1.2 Condition 2. Polysemic “de” complement
Story 1

Pedro comic mucho en el cumpleafios de su hermana y la comida le cayo mal. Ahora
no se siente muy bien y la barriga le pesa como si tuviera piedras dentro de él. A ver
pepe, describeme a Pedro.

17. Comic tanto que esta mal de la barriga.

1.8. Comic tanto que es mal de la barriga.
Story 2

Juan ha visto todos los programas del dia en la televisibn y ahora ya no quiere ver un
programa mas. No sabe que hacer ahora pero decidié que no va a ver mas television
hasta manafia. A ver Pepe, describeme a Juan.

19. Pedro esta aburrido de ver televisién.

20. Pedro es aburrido de ver televisién.
Story 3

Pepa parece ser una madre muy feliz porque tiene dos hijas muy inteligentes. Las nir'ias
siempre se sacan las mejores notas del curse y eso tiene a la mama muy orgullosa. A
ver pepe, describeme a Pepa.

21. Pepa esta orgullosa de sus hijas.

lll

22. Pepa es orgullosa de sus hijas.
Story 4

Luis no ha comido nada en todo el dia desde que salio tempranito a jugar con sus amigos.
Ahora tiene tremenda hambre y solo piensa en comerse un buen plate de arroz y frijoles.
A ver Pepe, describeme a Luis.

23. Luis esta muerto de hambre.

24. Luis es muerto de hambre.

C.1.3 Condition 3 Context biased
Story 1

A Silvia se la conoce como la conversadora del barrio porque generalmente habla mucho
pero hey no ha dicho nada. Todo el mundo se extrafia porque nadie le ha podido sacar
ni una palabra. A ver Pepe, describeme a Silvia.

25. Silvia esta muy callada.

26. Silvia es muy callada.
Story 2

Todos conocemos a Maria desde Chiquita y ella nunca habla mucho. En realidad, casi
nunca abre la boca , pero hoy algo extrafio 1e pasa porque no para de hablar. Que
tendra. Maria boy!!! A ver pepe, describeme a Maria

27. Maria esta. callada.

28. Maria es callada.
Story 3

Unos pajaros negros 1e dieron un susto grandisimo a Claudita ayer en la noche. Fue tan
grande el susto que casi se muric’) de miedo y se puso blanca como el papel. A ver pepe,
describeme a Claudita.

29. Claudita esta blanca del susto.

112

30. Claudita es blanca del susto.
Story 4

A Pepa la llaman clarita porque parece transparente. Salio igualita de blanca que su
papa. Tiene un color de piel tan blanco que no le cambia ni aunque coja sol en la playa.
A ver pepe, describeme a Pepa.

31. Pepa esta blanca.

32. Pepa es blanca.
Story 5

Claudia fue a la playa y cogié mucho sol. Cuando llegé a la casa le dijo a la mama que
le ardfa y picaba la piel. Clare, 1e dijo la mama, si mira como te quemaste. A ver Pepe,
describeme a Claudia?

33. Claudia esta colorada.

34. Claudia es colorada.
Story 6

Los tomates Péerez tuvieron una hija roja muy bonita que se llama Cecilia. Cecilia
nacic’) con un color rojo brillante muy lindo. Como su color resalta muchc, todos la
llaman “la colorada” A ver Pepe, describeme a Cecilia.

35. Cecilia esta colorada.

36. Cecilia es colorada.
Story 7

Pedro se encontro a Juan en la escuela esta mafiana y apenas lo saludé, se dio cuenta de
que Juan habia llorado. Se die cuenta porque Juan tem’a los ojos extranos, hinchados y
colorados. A ver pepe, describeme a Juan

37. Los ojos de Juan estan rojos.

38. Los ojos de Juan son rojos.

113

Story 8

Este conejo se llama Pirolo y tiene unos ojos rojos muy bonitos. Pirolo saco el color de
ojos a su mama y papa’. que también tienen unos ojos rojos muy lindos. A ver Pepe,
describeme a Pirolo.

39. Los ojos de Pirolo estan rojos.

40. Los ojos de Pirolo son rojos.

C.1.4 Condition 4. Absolute clauses
Story 1

La familia Pérez quiere participar en la carrera del domingo pero hay un problema.
Maria va a tener un nifio pronto y tiene una barriga enorme. No puede correr porque
es peligroso para el nifio. A ver Pepe, describeme la situacién.

41.Con Maria embarazada no pueden participar en la carrera.
Story 2

La gente del barrio quiere que Estela, una mulatica muy simpatica, participe en el
concurso“La mulata del afio”. Estela es una mulata muy coqueta y risuefia y seguro
que gana el primer lugar. A ver Pepe, describeme la situacién de Estela.

42. Con Estela mulata, el barrio ganara el concurso de belleza.
Story 3

El maestro de matematicas quiere que Pedro participe en el concurso de matematicas
porque lo considera el nifio mas inteligente del curse. Pedro siempre saca 100 puntos en
todas las pruebas. A ver Pepe, describeme la situacion del curso.

43. Con pedrito inteligente, el curse ganara el concurso de matematicas.
Story 4

La televisién se rompié y Pedro no puede seguir viendo los mufiequitos. El se ha eno-

jado mucho porque estaban poniendo unos mur'iequitos nuevos y ademas, el televisor se

114

rompio justo en la mejor parte. A ver Pepe, describeme la situacion

44. Con la television rota, Pedro no puede ver ningt’In programa

C.1.5 Condition 5. Conjunction
Story 1

Pedro va a su primera fiesta solo y se ve muy bonito. La mama se paso mucho tiempo
peinandolo para que Pedro causara muy buena impresién en la fiesta. Si hasta lo perfume
y todo. A ver Pepe, describeme a Pedro

45. Pedro es lindo y peinado.

45’. Pedro esta peinado y lindo.
Story 2

Luis se compré una radio nueva esta mafiana y cuando la quiso poner se dio cuenta
de que no funcionaba. Que extrafio se dijo Luis, si las radios nuevas nunca se echan a
perder tan rapido. A ver Pepe, describeme la radio.

46. La radio es nueva y rota.

46’. La radio esta nueva y rota.
Story 3

El viejo Lazaro ha pintado tantos cuadros que ya no se pueden ni contar. Ya no quiere
pintar mas porque se canso pero se siente muy contento por haber pintado unos cuadros
tan lindos. A ver Pepe, describeme a Lazaro.

47. Lazaro es cansado y contento

47’. Lazaro esta cansado y contento
Story 4

A Estela todos la consideran la mulatica mas inteligente del barrio. Siempre saca el
primer promedio del curse . En vez de jugar en la calle, Estela se la pasa resolviendo

problemas de matematicas. A ver Pepe, describeme a Estela.

115

48. Estela es inteligente y mulata.

48’. Estela esta inteligente y mulata.

C.1.6 Fillers used in the Acceptability Task

1. Maria quiere que sus papas vean la luna

‘Maria want that her parents see the moon’

2. El gate de Luis nunca hace travesuras

‘The cat of Luis never make mischiveous things’

3. Maria siempre se come toda la comida

‘Maria always SE eat all the food’

4. Caperucita y el lobo viven en el bosque

‘The Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf live in the woods’

5. Cecilia se porta mal en la escuela

‘Cecilia SE behave bad in the school’

6. Juan siempre llega alegre a la escuela

‘Juan always come happy to the school’

7. A Maria 1e gusta recoger flores

‘To Maria LE like pick flowers’

8. Silvia vas a1 parque en guagua

‘Silvia go—2p. sg to the park in bus’

9. Lazaro no ve mucho a su familia

‘Lazaro no see much to his family’

116

10.

II.

l2.

l3.

l4.

15.

16.

I7.

18.

A Claudita le da miedo salir sola

‘To Claudita LE give scare go out alone’

El conejo Pirolo cuida las plantas del barrio

‘The rabitt Pirolo takes care of the plants of the neighborhood’

Estela tiene un pelos largos

‘Estela has one hairs long’

Maria cumplieron 5 afios

‘Maria turned pl 5 years’

A Pedro se le gusta ver la television

‘To Peter SE LE like watch the TV’

Pedro se ve muy elegante hoy

‘Pedro SE look very elegant today’

Luis hace ejercicios mientras escucha mI’Isica

‘Luis makes exercises while listen music’

Catalina se ha enamorado de Carlos

‘Catalina SE has love of Carlos’

Chabeli le ragalé una rosa a Sebastian

‘Chabeli LE gave a rose to Sebastian’

C.2 Distribution of Items of the Acceptability Task

Experiment 1 which contained groups A and B included 8 experimental sentences from

condition 3“Context”, 4 experimental sentences from condition 4“Absolute clauses” and

117

4 experimental sentences from condition 5“Conjunction” plus 10 fillers. Experiment 2
which contained groups A and B include 8 experimental sentences from condition 1
“Polysemic free”, and 4 experimental sentences from condition 2 “de Complement” plus
8 fillers.

The distribution of the items for experiment 1 was as follows:

Group A

1. F8

2. 25 (SL Good). Silvia esta muy callada ‘Silvia is very quiet’

3. 46’(Good). La radio esta. nueva y rota ‘The radio is new and broken’
4. F2
5. F1
6. 44 (SL Good). Con la television rota, Pedro no puede ver ningn programa ‘With
the TV broken, Pedro can’t watch any program’

7. F15

8. 43 (IL Bad). Con Pedrito inteligente, el curse ganara el concurso de matematicas
‘With Pedrito intelligent, the class will win the Math contest’

9. 27 (IL Bad). Maria esta callada ‘Maria is quiet’

10. F6

11. 33 (SL Good). Claudia esta colorada ‘Claudia is reddish’

12. 30 (SL Bad). Claudita es blanca del susto ‘Claudita is white of scare’

13. F4

14. 47 (Bad)

15. 41(SLGood). Con Maria embarazada, no pueden participar en la carrera del
domingo ‘With Maria pregnant, they can’t participate in the Sunday’s race’

16. F5

17. 38 (SL Bad). Los ojos de Juan son rojos ‘Juan’s eyes are red’

18. 42 (IL Bad). Con Estela mulata, el barrio ganara el concurso de belleza ‘With

118

Estela mulata, the town will win the beauty contest’

19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.

F7

35 (IL Bad). Cecilia esta colorada ‘Cecilia is red’

48 (Good). Estela es inteligente y mulata ‘Estela is intelligent and mulata’
F16

40 (IL Good).Los ojos de Pirolo son rojos ‘Pirolo’s eyes are red’

F3

32 (IL Good). Pepa es blanca ‘Pepa is white’

45 (Bad ).Pedro es lindo y peinado ‘Pedro is handsome and combed’

Group B

1.
2.

F3

41 (IL Good) Con Maria embarazada no pueden participar en la carrera ‘With

Maria pregnant, they can’t participate in the Sunday’s race’

3. F15

4. 36 IL (Good) Cecilia es colorada ‘Cecilia is red’

5. 46 (Bad) La radio es nueva y rota ‘The radio is new and broken’

6. F8

7. 28 (IL Good) Maria es callada ‘Maria is quiet’

8. F7

9. 39 (IL Bad) Los ojos de Pirolo estan rojos ‘Pirolo’s eyes are red’

10. F16

11. 37 (SL Good) Los ojos de Juan esta. n rojos ‘Juan’s eyes are red’ 12. 44 (SL

Good) Con la television rota, Pedro no puede ver ningun programa ‘With the TV broken,

Pedro can’t watch any program’

13. F4

14. 47’ (Good) Lazaro esta cansado y contento ‘Lazaro is tired and happy’

15. 34 SL (Bad) Claudia es colorada ’Claudia is red’

119

16. F5

17. 29 (SL Good) Claudita esta blanca del susto lClaudita is white because she is
scared’

18. F2

19. 45’ (Good) Pedro esta peinado y lindo ‘Pedro is combed and handsome’

20. 31 (IL Bad) Pepa esta. blanca ‘Pepa is white’

21. 26 (SLBad) Silvia es muy callada ‘Silvia is very quiet’

22. F1

23. 42 (IL Bad) Con Estela mulata, el barrio ganara el concurso de belleza ‘With
Estela mulata, the town will win the beauty contest’

24. F6

25. 48’ (Bad) Estela esta inteligente y mulata ‘Estela is intelligent and mulata’

26. 43 (Bad) Con Pedrito inteligente, el curso ganara e1 concurso de matematicas
‘With Pedrito intelligent, the class will win the Math contest’

The distribution of items for experiment 2 was as follows:

Group A

1. F14

2. 17 (SL Good) Comic tanto que esta mal de la barriga ‘Ile ate so much that his
stomach hurts’

3. 3 (IL Bad) Maria es buena ‘Maria is good’

4. F10

5. 8 (IL Good) El perro de Juanito es listo ‘Juanito’s dog is smart’

6. F12

7. 21 (SL Good) Pepa esta. orgullosa de sus hijas ‘Pepa is proud of her daughters’

8. 9 (SL Good) El gato esta. vivo ‘The cat is alive’

9. F17

10. 11 (IL Bad) El gato esta vivo ‘The cat is alive’

120

11. F9
12. 6 (SL Bad) El perro de Pablo es listo ‘Pablo’s dog is smart’
l3. F11
14. 1 (SL Good) Porque la radio esta buena ‘Because the radio is working properly’
15. 16 (IL Good) El lobo es male ‘The wolf is bad’
16. F18
17. 20 (SL Bad) Pedro es aburrido de ver television ‘Pedro is bored of watching TV’
18. F13
19. 14 (SL Bad) La lavadora es mala ‘The washing machine is bad’
20. 24 (SL Bad) Luis es muerto de hambre Luis is dead of hunger ‘Luis is very
hungry’
Group B
1. F12
10 (SL Bad) El gate es vivo ‘The cat is smart’
F10

“9°30

. 4 (IL Bad) Maria es buena ‘Maria is good’

5. 15 (IL Bad) El lobo esta male ‘The wolf is bad’

6. F9

7. 23 (SL Good) Luis esta muerto de hambre ‘Luis is dead of hunger’

8. F17

9. 19 (SL Good) Pedro esta aburrido de ver television ‘Pedro is bored of watching
TV’

10. 12 (SL Good) El gato es vivo ‘The cat is smart’

11. F13

12. F14

13. F18

14. 22 (SL Bad) Pepa es orgullosa de sus hijas ‘Pepa is proud of her daughters’

121

15. 5 (SL Good) El perro de Juan esta listo ‘Juan’s dog is ready’

16. 2 (SL Bad) Por que la radio es buena ‘Because the radio is good’

17. F11

18. 18 (SL Bad) Comio tanto que es mal de la barriga ‘Ile ate so much that his
stomach hurts’

19. 7 (IL Good) El perro de Juanito es listo ‘Juanito’s dog is smart’

20. 13 (SL Good) La lavadora esta mala ‘The washing machine is broken’

C.3 Scores and Means per condition, per three age
groups

122

Table C.1: Means per three age groups. Cond. 1 Group A

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subject age esta es es esta esta es es Mean
# buena listo listo vivo vivo mala male group
38 6B 8G 9G 11B 14B 16G
is at- is is is is is is
trac- smart smart alive alive bad mean
tive
1 1 0 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
l l 1 l 1 1 l
1 1 1 l 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 0 l 1
l 1 1 1 l l 1
1 0 1 1 1 0 l
9 1 0 1 1 0 0 1
10 I l l I 0 1
10 l l l 1 l 0 l l
I 1 l2 1 1 l 1 1 0
N 1 0. 1 0. 0. 0.
Young Child
1 5 54 0 1 1 0 1 1 0
2 7 47 0 0 1 1 0 1 1
3 10 62 0 0 1 1 1 1 0
4 22 65 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
MEAN 0 0.25 0.75 0.75 0.5 0.75 0.5 0.5
Old Child
I I4 76 1 1 l l 1 1 1
2 15 87 0 0 1 1 0 1 1
3 19 70 1 0 1 l 0 1 I
MEAN 0.67 0.33 1 1 0.33 1 1 0.76

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Item 1 was eliminated

123

 

 

Table C.2: Means per three age groups. Cond 1 Group B

 

 

 

 

 

Subj age es es esta es es esta Mean
# buena buena listo vivo vivo male group
28 4G 5G IOB 12G 15B
is is is is is is
good good ready ready smart mean

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adult

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
1
1

0
l

13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23

N

Young Child

OHHp-sfi—IH—IHOy—sp—Jp—l

(D
H

HHy—Iy—lp—Ap—AHHHp—lu—Ap—d

PHh—‘Ot—‘I—‘Ot—‘b—‘t—‘v—‘o

Ot—‘Hv—‘h—‘or-‘t—‘t—‘b-‘r—‘H

(D
[_s

ot—Jy—Js—lOp—lp—IHp—dp—st—Jp—s

p—L—AHQ—sy—sp—AHp—sp—Jp—sg—su—s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 8 52 0 1 1 0 1 0
2 9 55 1 1 1 0 l I
3 ll 65 0 1 1 0 1 0
4 23 62 1 0 0 l 0 1
5 24 63 0 1 1 1 1 1
6 25 65 1 1 0 1 0 I
MEAN 0.5 0.83 0.67 0.5 0.67 0.67 0.64
Old Child
1 12 67 0 1 1 1 0 1
2 17 67 0 1 1 0 1 1
3 26 66 0 1 0 0 1 0
MEAN 0 I 0.67 0.33 0.67 0.67 0.56

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

124

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table C.3: Means per three age groups. Cond 2 Group A
Sub j age esta mal esta es Mean
# de la orgul- muerto Group
barriga losa de de ham-
17G sus hi jas bre
21G 24B
is bad is proud is dead
of the of her of
belly daugh— hunger
ters
Adult
1 1 1
2 1 1
3 1 1
4 1 1
5 1 1
6 1 1
7 1 1
8 9 1 1
9 10 1 1
1 11 1 1
1 12 1 I
MEAN 1 1
Young Child
1 5 54 1 1 1
2 7 47 1 1 0
3 10 62 1 l l
4 22 65 1 1 0
MEAN 1 1 0.5 0.83
Old Child
1 14 76 l 1 1
2 15 87 1 1 0
3 19 70 1 1 0
MEAN 1 1 0.33 0.78

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Items 19 and 20 were eliminated

125

 

 

 

Table C.4: Means per three age groups

. Cond 2 Group B

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sub j age es mal es orgul- esta Mean
# de la losa de muerto group
barriga sus hi jas de ham-
18B 22B bre
23G
is bad is proud is dead
of the of her of
belly daugh- hunger
ters
Adult
1 13 l 1
2 l 4 l 1
3 15 1 l
4 l6 1 1
5 17 1 I
6 18 1 1
7 l 9 1 l
8 20 1 1
9 21 1 1
10 22 1 1
l l 23 . I I
MEAN 1 1
Young Chil
1 8 52 0 0 1
2 9 55 1 1 1
3 1 1 65 1 0 1
4 23 62 1 1 0
5 24 63 1 0 1
6 25 65 1 1 0
MEAN 0.83 0.5 0.67 0.67
Old Child
I 12 67 1 1 1
2 17 67 1 0 1
3 26 66 1 1 I
MEAN 1 0.67 1 0.89

 

 

 

 

 

126

 

 

Table C.5: Means per three age groups. Cond 3 Group A

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sub j age esta’. esta es es esta esta son son Mean
# callada, callada blanca blanca col- col- rojos rojos group
25G 27B 308 32G orada orada 388 40G
33G 35B
is is is is is is are are
quiet quiet white white red- red- red red
(now) (new) dish dish
(now) (now)
Adult
1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1
2 2 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1
3 3 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1
4 4 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
5 5 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1
6 6 l 1 1 l 1 0 1 1
7 7 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 l
8 8 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1
9 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1
10 0 1 l . 1 1 1 1
ll 1 l 1 1 1 0 0 l
1 1 1 1 l 1 1 l
0. 0. 0. 1 0. 0. 0. 1
1 1 39 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1
2 2 40 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1
3 3 53 O 0 0 1 1 1 0 1
4 4 43 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1
5 5 54 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
6 10 62 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1
7 11 65 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 1
MEAN 0.71 0 0.29 0.86 0.71 0.71 0.71 1 0.62
Old Child
1 12 67 0 0 1 1 1 0 1 1
2 13 67 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1
3 I4 76 1 1 1 1 1 1 I 1
4 15 87 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 1
5 27 74 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 I
MEAN 0.8 0.4 0.4 1 1 0.2 0.6 1 0.675

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

127

Table C.6: Means per three age groups. Cond 3 Group B

 

 

 

 

Subj age es es esta esta es es esta esta Mean
# callada. callada blanca blanca col- col- rojo rojo group
26B 28G 29G 3lB orada orada 37G 39B
34B 36G
is is is is is is is is
quiet quiet white white red- red- red red
(now) (new) dish dish (now) (now)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adult

1 13 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
2 14 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
3 15 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
4 16 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
5 17 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
6 18 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1
7 19 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
8 20 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1
9 21 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1
10 22 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
11 23 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
MEAN 1 0.91 0. 0. 1 0.91 0.91 1
Young i

1 6 52 1 0 0 0 1 0 0
2 7 47 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0
MEAN 1 0 5 1 0 0 0 5 0 5 0 0.44
Old Child

1 16 67 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
2 17 67 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1
3 18 70 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0
4 19 70 0 1 1 0 0 l 1 0
5 20 74 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1
6 21 77 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 0
MEAN 0.33 0.33 0.83 0.33 0.5 0.83 0.67 0.5 0.54

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

128

Table C.7: Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 4 Adults

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adult age Con Con E. Con P. Con la TV Mean
# M. em- mulata inteligente rota 44G group

barazada 42B 438
41G
With M. With E. With P. in- With the
pregnant mulata telligent TV broken

I 1 0 l 1 1

2 2 l 0 I l

3 3 l 1 1 l

4 4 0 1 1 1

5 5 1 1 . 1

6 6 1 l 1 l

7 7 l 1 0 1

8 8 0 0 0 1

9 9 1 0 1 1

10 10 0 0 0 1

1 1 11 1 0 1 1

12 12 1 1 1 0

l3 l3 1 l l 1

14 14 1 1 1 l

15 15 1 1 1 1

16 16 1 1 1 1

17 17 l 1 0 1

18 18 1 1 1 1

19 19 l 0 0 1

20 20 1 0 . .

21 21 0 1 1 0

22 22 l l 1 1

23 23 1 l 1 I

MEAN 0.78 0.695 0.76 0.91 0.79

 

 

 

 

 

 

129

 

Table C.8: Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 4 Children

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

child age Con Con E. Con P. Con la TV Mean
# M. em— mulata inteligente rota 44G Group

barazada 42B 438
41G
With M. With E. With P. in- With the
pregnant mulata telligent TV broken

Young Child

1 1 39 1 1 0 1

2 2 40 0 0 1 0

3 3 53 l 1 1 1

4 4 43 1 0 0 1

5 5 54 1 0 0 0

6 6 52 0 1 0 0

7 7 47 0 0 1 1

8 10 62 0 1 1 1

9 11 65 1 0 0 I

MEAN 0.56 0.44 0.44 0.67 0.53

Old Child

1 12 67 0 I l 1

2 13 67 1 0 0 1

3 14 76 0 1 0 1

4 15 87 1 0 0 1

5 16 67 1 0 0 0

6 17 67 0 0 1 1

7 18 70 1 1 1 l

8 19 70 1 0 0 1

9 20 74 0 1 1 0

10 21 77 1 0 0 1

11 27 74 1 0 0 1

MEAN 0.64 0.36 0.36 0.82 0.55

 

 

 

 

 

 

130

 

Table C.9: Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 5 Group A

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subj age es lindo y esta nueva es cansado es in- Mean
# peinado y rota 46’G y contento teligente Group
458 47B y mulata
48G
is hand- is new and is tired and is intelli-
some and broken happy gent and
combed mulata
Adult
1 1 l 1 1 1
2 2 1 1 1 1
3 3 1 0 1 l
4 4 1 1 1 1
5 5 1 0 1 1
6 6 1 1 1 1
7 7 1 1 1 1
8 8 1 1 0 1
9 9 1 0 0 1
10 10 0 0 1 1
11 0 1 0 1
12 0 1 1 1
0. 0. 0. 1
Young ild
1 1 39 0 1 0 0
2 2 40 0 0 0 1
3 3 53 0 1 1 1
4 4 43 0 1 1 1
5 5 54 0 0 0 1
6 10 62 1 0 0 0
7 11 65 0 1 0 1
MEAN 0.14 0.57 0.29 0.71 0.43
Old Child
1 12 67 1 1 1 1
2 13 67 0 0 0 1
3 14 76 1 1 1 1
4 15 87 0 0 1 1
5 27 74 0 1 0 I
MEAN 0.4 0.6 0.6 1 0.65

 

 

 

 

 

 

131

 

 

Table C.10: Means Three Age Groups. Cond. 5 Group B

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Subj age esta es nueva y esta esta in- Mean
# peinado y rota 46B cansado y teligente Group
lindo 45’G contento y mulata
47’G 48’B
is combed is new and is tired and is intelli-
and hand- broken happy gent and
some mulata
Adult

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Young hild

_s—dp—IHp—IHp—lp—sp—Jp—IHp—I

Ot—lh—AOO—‘OHOt—ir—Jh—It—A

OOH—Lu—st—lp—st—Jy—Ap—sp—AH

o—sp—ly—A—Ao—Ap—Ap—dp—lp—lp—A

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 6 52 1 0 1 1

2 7 47 I 1 l 0

MEAN 1 0.5 1 0.5 0.75
Old Child

1 I6
2 17
3 l8
4 19

5 20
6 21
MEAN

132

 

 

 

C.4 Means per Age, per Group and Comparison of
Means

Table 011: Means in three Age Groups (the number of subjects is in parentheses)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Condition Adults G1 Young G2 Old G3
CIA 0.867 (11) 0.5 ( 4) 0.76 (3)
C18 0.909 (11) 0.555 (6) 0.833 (3)
C2A 1(11) 0.833(4) 0.777 (3)
C28 0.9696 (11) 0.6666 (6) 0.8888 (3)
C3A 0.854(12) 0.625 (7) 0.675 (5)
C3B 0.9431(11) 0.4375 (2) 0.5416 (6)
C4 0.7873 (23) 0.5277 (9) 0.5454 (11)
C5A 0.7916 (12) 0.428 (7) 0.65 (5)
C5B 0.8863 (11) 0.75 (2) 0.708 (6)

 

133

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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C.5 Scores and Means per Condition for Adults and
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